LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



gfte Jiitttents 7 Series of gttglistx ©lassies. 



Revolt of the Tartars 



OR 



FLIGHT OF THE KALMUCK KHAN 



/ Y 



THOMAS DE OUINCEY 



EDITED BY 

FRANKLIN T. BAKER, A.M. 

Professor of English in the Teachers' College, New York City 




LEACH, SHEWELL, & SANBORN, 

BOSTON. NEW YORK. CHICAGO. 






Copyright, 1896, 
By Leach, Shewell, & Sanbokn. 



C. J. PETEE8 & Son, Typogkaphebs. 



Berwick & Smith, Pkintebs. 






PREFACE. 



The text of the present edition of De Quincey's The 
Revolt of the Tartars is based upon his revision in 1854 
for his collected works. It has seemed best, however, 
to change the text in the slight degree needed to mod- 
ernize it, because the special aim of this edition is to 
assist in preparing students for the college require- 
ments in English. For the same reason, the Critical 
Notes have been made to take account of the linguistic 
rather than the literary side of the work. This has 
seemed the more justifiable for the reason that this 
work of De Quincey's has, perhaps, less of literary 
excellence than some of his other writings. The Ex- 
planatory Notes relating to the geography of the coun- 
try should be used in connection with good maps of 
Russia and Siberia. It may help to arouse the pupil's 
interest to have him attempt to trace, from the some- 
what meagre details given by the author, the route of 
the Tartars. But any use of the Notes which would 
stand between the pupil and his study of the book as 
language and literature would be " from the purpose " 

of this edition. 

F. T. B. 

Teachers College, New York. 
October, 1896. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

The Life of Thomas de Quincey 1 

Revolt of the Tartars y 

Appended Editorial Note 85 

Notes — 

Explanatory 93 

Critical 103 



LIFE OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 



The events of real interest in the life of Thomas De 
Quincey may be briefly told. He was born Aug. 15, 1785, in 
Manchester, England, and died in Edinburgh, Dec. 8, 1859. 
His life was thus coextensive with two of the greatest periods 
of English literature, — with the so-called Lake school and the 
early Victorian era. 

His father, a descendant of Richard De Quincy of the time 
of the Conqueror, the first of the Earls of Winchester, was a 
successful merchant, a man of literary tastes, and of some 
literary ability. In the Gentleman s Magazine, in 1772, he 
published a series of articles under the title, " A Tour in the 
Midland Counties of England." The articles were signed 
T Q The prefix De of the name had been in dis- 
use for some time, but was resumed by our author. These 
papers show intelligent observation, an eye for the picturesque 
and beautiful, and an occasional elevation of thought to the 
verge of the poetic. De Quincey's mother is described as a 
woman of stately ways, refined tastes, and unusual endow- 
ments, but with perhaps too much of unbending firmness, too 
much regard to established social usages, and too little sympa- 
thetic insight to be the wisest guide to this precocious and 
sensitive child with his dreams and vagaries. 

De Quincey's childhood was spent with his brothers and 



2 BE VOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

sisters at Greenhay, near Manchester. Their education was 
left to the care of the mother. Their father died when De 
Quincey was but seven, leaving ample means for the continu- 
ance of their superior educational and social advantages. 

This period of De Quincey's life derives special interest from 
his writings. Some of his deeper experiences seem to have 
begun here. At any rate, some of the most powerful passages 
in his sequel to the Confessions, and in his autobiographical 
notes, refer to this period. Prominent among them is his 
grief for the death of his little sister, so beautifully described 
in the Suspiria de Profundis. How much of this feeling he 
then experienced, and how much was projected backwards by 
the mature power of his imaginative genius, it is of course 
impossible to determine. 

Like the majority of men of great talents, he was preco- 
cious. He says that he does not know the time when he 
began to read and write ; and his memory for the events of 
his early childhood was phenomenal. His instruction was be- 
gun at home. Next he was tutored by a clergyman who lived 
near by. Later he went to school at Bath, at Winkfield, and 
at Manchester successively. In all of these schools he easily 
outstripped his school-fellows, especially in the classics, which 
were then, as yet in many English schools, the most impor- 
tant studies in the course. When he was but twelve years 
old, one of his masters said of him, " That boy could ha- 
rangue an Athenian mob." He had also, by this time, culti- 
vated a taste for the best in English literature. Before he left 
the public schools he became an ardent admirer of Words- 
worth and the " Lakists." 

In the interval between his attendance at the schools in 
Winkfield and in Manchester, he travelled in Ireland. The 



LIFE OF THOMAS 1)E QUINCEY. 3 

experiences of this tour seem to have been a potent force in 
his development. Of the effects upon himself of the culti- 
vated men and women with whom he came in contact, he 
writes, " I was an altered creature, never again lapsing into 
the careless, irreflective mind of childhood." 

But no period of his school life was fraught with conse- 
quences so grave as was that spent in the Manchester Gram- 
mar School. Finding the associations uncongenial, and the 
system without stimulus for his intellect or gratification for 
his tastes, he petitioned his mother that he might be placed 
in another school. When this request was refused, he ran 
away from the school to his home. This was in the summer 
of 1802. Through the intervention of an indulgent uncle, 
his mother's displeasure was softened into permission for him 
to travel for a while in Wales, on a small allowance. 

But his vagrant imagination was attracted from the rural 
quiet of Wales to the busy world of London. He renounced 
his allowance, cut off all communication between himself 
and his home, and buried himself in the metropolis. As 
might have been expected of an inexperienced, unpractical, 
and dreamy youth of seventeen, he fell upon hardships. How 
he suffered cold and hunger, became the innocent companion 
of the outcasts of the streets, came to know the bitterness of 
making suit to the money-lenders, and finally undermined his 
health, he has himself told us in his Confessions. 

After a year of this life, he was discovered by his friends, 
and entered at Worcester College, Oxford. That he did not 
take his degree was due neither to lack of ability nor of indus- 
try, but rather, it seems, to a shyness that kept him from tak- 
ing the viva voce part of his examinations. He had already 
acquitted himself with great credit in the written tests. He 



4 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

is described by the president of the college, Dr. Cotton, as " a 
quiet and studious man, . . . remarkable even in those days 
for his rare conversational powers, and for his extraordinary 
stock of information upon every subject started." 

Three things stand out prominently in his life at the univer- 
sity. He learned to appreciate German literature and philoso- 
phy, and set himself seriously to work to master the German 
language ; he began the systematic study of English literature, 
in which he was already widely read, but which he had not yet 
learned to know as a growth, as a continuous development ; 
and he began at this time to take opium, — a habit which put 
almost all his later life in bondage, and not only colored but 
controlled his work. He tells us that he took it first to relieve 
his suffering from the disease left in his system by the hard- 
ships of his London vagrancy. 

The new group of poets and thinkers in the Lake district 
had long been an attraction to De Quincey. Not long after 
leaving the university he went to live in that district. Here 
he became the friend of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and 
especially of Wilson, the "Kit North " of the Nodes Ambro- 
siance. Through the latter he came in contact also with the 
younger men of ability in Edinburgh, among whom were Sir 
William Hamilton and Lockhart. The extent of his interest 
in these men, and something of the character of De Quincey 
himself, are well shown in his characteristic action in supply- 
ing Wordsworth with books and Coleridge with money. In 
1816 he married, and settled in the Lake district in the cottage 
at Grasmere formerly occupied by Wordsworth. 

During all this time, though an eager student and prolific 
thinker, he had published nothing, unless the work of his brief 
term as editor of a provincial newspaper, the Westmoreland 



LIFE OF THOMAS 1)E QUINCE Y. 5 

Gazette, is to be regarded in that light. In 1821 there appeared 
in the London Magazine the first part of The Confessions of an 
English Opium-Ealer. Subsequent numbers completed the 
series. These papers were widely read and much discussed. 
Their authorship was as yet unknown to the public. But when 
he began to write on other subjects, anything that the "Opium- 
Eater" had to contribute had a ready demand. His failing 
had given him fame. His articles covered a wide range of 
subjects. They had in their favor, not merely the common- 
place impulse which often leads the reading public to turn to 
the morbid in human life; but they displayed a vast amount 
of curious, interesting, and valuable learning; an elegant, ver- 
satile, and sonorous style; a brilliant and sustained imagina- 
tion; and subtle powers of analysis. These magazine articles, 
many of which have now become classics, were written often 
under the spur of financial necessity, and cover a period of 
over thirty years. 

During the latter part of this period, De Quincey lived first 
in London, then in Edinburgh. Although his residence in 
Edinburgh extended over the period of his greatest fame, 
when it was well known who the brilliant •• < )pium-Eater " 
was, he was never in any real sense one of its citizens. His 
tendency to sequestrate himself, to fail to keep appointments 
with those who sought to bring him into the circle of the lit- 
erary and social lights of his time, his owl-like habits, kept 
him a sort of alien to the last. It is said that the majority of 
the citizens of Edinburgh do not know to-day that the tablet 
to his memory is in the West Churchyard. The city does its 
honor to Scott and Burns. 

His appearance and personal traits, we are told, at once set 
him apart from other men. He was of diminutive size, hardly 



6 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

more than five feet high. " One was struck," says his biog- 
rapher, Masson, " with the peculiar beauty of his head and 
forehead, rising disproportionately high over his small, wrinkly 
visage, and gentle, deep-set eyes." His experiences had left 
their traces. Carlyle had said of him, " Eccovi : look at 
him. This child has been in hell." He was shy, sensitive, 
a dreamer, and a lover of solitude. But when he could be 
brought, by force or by craft, into a gathering of his intel- 
lectual peers, he was well worth hearing. His richness and 
fluency of ideas, his insight into the deeper springs of life 
and character, and the musical cadences of his speech, repaid 
the trouble of his capture. 

He was one of the gentlest of creatures, but, w r rites one of 
his daughters, " not a reassuring man for nervous people to 
live with, as those nights were exceptional on which he did 
not set something on fire, the commonest incident being for 
some one to look up from book or work to say casually, 
' Papa, you?- hair is on Jire 1 ' of which a calm ' Is it, my love V 
and a hand rubbing out the blaze, w T ere all the notice taken." 

It is significant that most estimates of the value of He 
Quincey's work concern themselves with his style. He was 
not a great thinker. Keen as were his powers of analysis, he 
was not always even a logical thinker. Above all, he was not 
capable of sustained, systematic thinking. His writings are 
full of beginnings that lead nowhere, and of promises that are 
never performed. His very habit of analysis led to a lack of 
proportion in his work. Little ideas get as much space as 
big ones. One is sometimes wearied by the feeling that it is 
not the thought that he is getting, but the author's power of 
saying things, irrespective of their worth, in a pleasing and 
original form. He planned great works which he never exe- 



LIFE OF THOMAS BE QUINCEY. 7 

cuted, especially a system of political economy, and a philo- 
sophical work on the Emendation of the Human Intellect. In 
this power of planning what he could not execute, he strik- 
ingly resembles Coleridge. 

Nor could he rise above prejudice. His works even show 
sometimes a tendency to pettiness and gossip. And yet his 
own claim that his habits and pleasures were in a high sense 
intellectual, is perfectly true. From his boyhood it was in 
the higher realms of the intellectual world that he lived. His 
weakness was of character, of will, rather than of intellect. 
How much this was due to physical weakness and to his 
bondage to opium we can never know ; but it is probable 
that these things kept him far below what he might have 
been. One compensation this opium-habit may be said to 
have had. Those magnificent dreams, which in fact and ex- 
pression — as in the Dream Fugue — our literature does not 
parallel, may be traced to this habit. 

But it is, after all, the style of De Quincey that fixes his 
place in literature. Majestic, gorgeous, flexible, — it satisfies, 
irrespective of the thought which it conveys. It is its own 
excuse for being. It is a new kind of music, as much like 
Milton's " organ-voice " as it is possible for prose to be like 
poetry. Indeed, it often is poetry, except that it lacks the 
measured and recurrent forms of verse. 

No account of De Quincey could give a just idea of his 
range of learning and his versatility if it omitted a list of 
his greatest works. They cover a wide range of topics and 
of styles, — historical, critical, descriptive, imaginative, theo- 
logical, philosophical, psychological, and political, serious and 
humorous. Among the best known are : The Confessions of 
an English Opium-Eater ; Biographical Sketches ; Homer and the 



8 BE VOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

HomeridcB ; The Ccesars ; The Revolt of the Tartars ; The Es- 
series ; Logic of Political Economy ; Rhetoric ; Style ; Theory 
of Greek Tragedy, The Antigone of Sophocles ; Murder Con- 
sidered as One of the Fine Arts ; Joan of Arc. 

The student is referred for further information regarding 
the life and work of De Quincey to Leslie Stephen's Hours in 
Library ; Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature ; Mas- 
son's Life of De Quincey. Above all, he is advised to read, 
not the books about De Quincey, but De Quincey. 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS; 

OR, 

FLIGHT OF THE KALMUCK KHAN AXD HIS PEOPLE 
FROM THE RUSSIAN TERRITORIES TO THE 
FRONTIERS OF CHINA 



There is no great event in modern history, or, per- 
haps it may be said more broadly, none in all history 
from its earliest records less generally known, or more 
striking to the imagination, than the flight eastwards of 
a principal Tartar nation across the boundless steppes 5 
of Asia in the latter half of the last century. The 
terminus a quo of this flight and the terminus ad quern 
are equally magnificent, — the mightiest of Christian 
thrones being the one, the mightiest of Pagan the other. 
And the grandeur of these two terminal objects is har- 10 
moniously supported by the romantic circumstances of 
the flight. In the abruptness of its commencement and 
the fierce velocity of its execution, we read the wild, 
barbaric character of those who conducted the move- 
ment. In the unity of purpose connecting this myriad 15 
of wills, and in the blind but unerring aim at a mark so 
remote, there is something which recalls to the mind 
those almighty instincts that propel the migrations of 
the swallow and the lemming, or the life-withering 

9 



10 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

marches of the locust. Then, again, in the gloomy ven- 
geance of Russia and her vast artillery, which hung 
upon the rear and the skirts of the fugitive vassals, we 
are reminded of Miltonic images, — such, for instance, 

5 as that of the solitary hand pursuing through desert 
spaces and through ancient chaos a rebellious host, and 
overtaking with volleying thunders those who believed 
themselves already within the security of darkness and 
of distance. 

10 I shall have occasion, further on, to compare this 
event with other great national catastrophes as to the 
magnitude of the suffering ; but it may also challenge a 
comparison with similar events under another relation, 
viz., as to its dramatic capabilities. Few cases, perhaps, 

15 in romance or history, can sustain a close collation with 
this as to the complexity of its separate interests. The 
great outline of the enterprise, taken in connection with 
the operative motives, hidden or avowed, and the reli- 
gious sanctions under which it was pursued, give to the 

20 case a triple character : Firstly, That of a conspiracy, 
with as close a unity in the incidents, and as much of 
a personal interest in the moving characters, with fine 
dramatic contrasts, as belongs to Venice Preserved or 
to the Fiesco of Schiller. Secondly, That of a great 

25 military expedition, offering the same romantic fea- 
tures of vast distances to be traversed, vast reverses 
to be sustained, untried routes, enemies obscurely ascer- 
tained, and hardships too vaguely prefigured, which mark 
the Egyptian expedition of Cambyses ; which mark the 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 11 

anabasis of the younger Cyrus, and the subsequent re- 
treat of the ten thousand to the Black Sea ; which mark 
the Parthian expeditions of the Romans, especially those 
of Crassus and Julian ,* or (as more disastrous than any 
of them, and in point of space as well as in amount of 5 
forces more extensive) the Russian anabasis and kataba- 
sis of Napoleon. Thirdly r That of a religious exodus, 
authorized by an oracle venerated throughout many 
nations of Asia, — an exodus, therefore, in so far resem- 
bling the great scriptural exodus of the Israelites under 10 
Moses and Joshua, as well as in the very peculiar dis- 
tinction of carrying along with them their entire fami- 
lies, women, children, slaves, their herds of cattle and 
of sheep, their horses and their camels. 

This triple character of the enterprise naturally in- 15 
vests it with a more comprehensive interest. But the 
dramatic interest which I have ascribed to it, or its fit- 
ness for a stage representation, depends partly upon 
the marked variety and the strength of the personal 
agencies concerned, and partly upon the succession of 20 
scenical situations. Even the steppes, the camels, the 
tents, the snowy and the sandy deserts, are not beyond 
the scale of our modern representative powers as often 
called into action in the theatres both of Paris and 
London ; and the series of situations unfolded, begin- 25 
ning with the general conflagration on the Volga, pass- 
ing thence to the disastrous scenes of the flight (as it 
literally was in its commencement), to the Tartar siege 
of the Russian fortress Koulagina; the bloody engage- 



12 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

ment with the Cossacks in the mountain passes at Ou- 
chim ; the surprisal by the Bashkirs and the advanced 
posts of the Russian army at Turgai ; the private con- 
spiracy at this point against the khan ; the long succes- 

5 sion of running fights ; the parting massacres at the 
Lake of Tengis under the eyes of the Chinese ; and, 
finally, the tragical retribution to Zebek-Dorchi at the, 
hunting lodge of the Chinese Emperor, — all these sit- 
uations communicate a scenical animation to the wild 

10 romance, if treated dramatically; while a higher and a 
philosophic interest belongs to it as a case of authen- 
tic history, commemorating a great revolution for good 
and for evil in the fortunes of a whole people, — a peo- 
ple semi-barbarous, but simple-hearted and of ancient 

15 descent. 

On the 21st of January, 1761, the young Prince 
Oubacha assumed the sceptre of the Kalmucks upon 
the death of his father. Some part of the power at- 
tached to this dignity he had already wielded since 

20 his fourteenth year, in quality of vice-khan, by the ex- 
press appointment and with the avowed support of 
the Russian government. He was now about eighteen 
years of age, amiable in his personal character, and not 
without titles to respect in his public character as a 

25 sovereign prince. In times more peaceable, and among 
a people more entirely civilized or more humanized by 
religion, it is even probable that he might have dis- 
charged his high duties with considerable distinction. 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 13 

But his lot was thrown upon stormy times, and a most 
difficult crisis among tribes whose native ferocity was 
exasperated by debasing forms of superstition, and by 
a nationality as well as an inflated conceit of their own 
merit absolutely unparalleled ; while the circumstances 5 
of their hard and trying position under the jealous sur- 
veillance of an irresistible lord paramount, in the person 
of the Russian Czar, gave a fiercer edge to the natural 
unamiableness of the Kalmuck disposition, and irritated 
its gloomier qualities into action under the restless im- 10 
pulses of suspicion and permanent distrust. No prince 
could hope for a cordial allegiance from his subjects or 
a peaceful reign under the circumstances of the case ; 
for the dilemma in which a Kalmuck ruler stood at 
present was of this nature: wanting the sanction and 15 
support of the Czar, he was inevitably too weak from 
without to command confidence from his subjects, or 
resistance to his competitors : on the other hand, with 
this kind of support, and deriving his title in any de- 
gree from the favor of the imperial court, he became 20 
almost in that extent an object of hatred at home and 
within the whole compass of his own territory. He was 
at once an object of hatred for the past, being a living 
monument of national independence ignominiously sur- 
rendered, and an object of jealousy for the future, as 25 
one who had already advertised himself to be a fitting 
tool for the ultimate purposes (whatsoever those might 
prove to be) of the Russian court. Coming himself to 
the Kalmuck sceptre under the heaviest weight of preju- 



14 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

dice from the unfortunate circumstances of his position, 
it might have been expected that Oubacha would have 
been pre-eminently an object of detestation ; for, besides 
his known dependence upon the cabinet of St. Peters- 

5 burg, the direct line of succession had been set aside, 
and the principle of inheritance violently suspended, in 
favor of his own father, so recently as nineteen years 
before the era of his own accession, consequently within 
the lively remembrance of the existing generation. He 

10 therefore, almost equally with his father, stood within 
the full current of the national prejudices, and might 
have anticipated the most pointed hostility. But it 
was not so : such are the caprices in human affairs that 
he was even, in a moderate sense, popular, — a benefit 

15 which wore the more cheering aspect and the promises 
of permanence, inasmuch as he owed it exclusively tc 
his personal qualities of kindness and affability, as well 
as to the beneficence of his government. On the other 
hand, to balance this unlooked-for prosperity at the out- 

20 set of his reign, he met with a rival in popular favor, 
almost a competitor, in the person of Zebek-Dorchi, a 
prince with considerable pretensions to the throne, and 
perhaps, it might be said, with equal pretensions. Zebek- 
Dorchi was a direct descendant of the same royal house as 

25 himself, through a different branch. On public grounds 
his claim stood, perhaps, on a footing equally good with 
that of Oubacha; while his personal qualities, even in 
those aspects which seemed to a philosophical observei 
most odious and repulsive, promised the most effectual 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 15 

aid to the dark purposes of an intriguer or a conspira- 
tor, and were generally fitted to win a popular support 
precisely in those points where Oubacha was most de- 
fective. He was much superior in external appearance 
to his rival on the throne, and so far better qualified to 5 
win the good opinion of a semi-barbarous people ; while 
his dark intellectual qualities of Machiavellian dissimu- 
lation, profound hypocrisy, and perfidy which knew no 
touch of remorse, were admirably calculated to sustain 
any ground which he might win from the simple-hearted 10 
people with whom he had to deal, and from the frank 
carelessness of his unconscious competitor. 

At the very outset of his treacherous career, Zebek- 
Dorchi was sagacious enough to perceive that nothing 
could be gained by open declaration of hostility to the 15 
reigning prince: the choice had been a deliberate act 
on the part of Russia, and Elizabeth Petrowna was not 
the person to recall her own favors with levity or upon 
slight grounds. Openly, therefore, to have declared his 
enmity towards his relative on the throne could have 20 
had no effect but that of arming suspicions against his 
own ulterior purposes in a quarter where it was most 
essential to his interest that for the present all suspicion 
should be hoodwinked. Accordingly, after much medi- 
tation, the course he took for opening his snares was 25 
this : He raised a rumor that his own life was in danger 
from the plots of several saissang (that is, Kalmuck 
nobles) who were leagued together under an oath to as- 
sassinate him ; and immediately after, assuming a well- 



10 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

counterfeited alarm, he fled to Tcherkask, followed by 
sixty-five tents. From this place he kept up a corre- 
spondence with the imperial court, and, by way of so- 
liciting his cause more effectually, he soon repaired in 

5 person to St. Petersburg. Once admitted to personal 
conferences with the cabinet, he found no difficulty in 
winning over the Russian councils to a concurrence with 
some of his political views, and thus covertly introdu- 
cing the point of that wedge which was finally to accom- 

10 plish his purposes. In particular, he persuaded the 
Russian Government to make a very important altera- 
tion in the constitution of the Kalmuck state council, 
which in effect reorganized the whole political condition 
of the state, and disturbed the balance of power as pre- 

15 viously adjusted. Of this council, in the Kalmuck lan- 
guage called sarga, there were eight members, called 
sargatchi ; and hitherto it had been the custom that 
these eight members should be entirely subordinate to 
the khan, holding, in fact, the ministerial character of 

20 secretaries and assistants, but in no respect acting as 
co-ordinate authorities. That had produced some incon- 
veniences in former reigns ; and it was easy for Zebek- 
Dorchi to point the jealousy of the Russian court to 
others more serious which might arise in future circum- 

25 stances of war or other contingencies. It was resolved, 
therefore, to place the sargatchi henceforward on a foot- 
ing of perfect independence, and therefore (as regarded 
responsibility) on a footing of equality with the khan. 
Their independence, however, had respect only to their 



BEVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 17 

own sovereign ; for towards Russia they were placed in 
a new attitude of direct duty and accountability by the 
creation in their favor of small pensions (three hundred 
rubles a year), which, however, to a Kalmuck of that 
day, were more considerable than might be supposed, 5 
and had a further value as marks of honorary distinc- 
tion emanating from a great empress. Thus far the 
purposes of Zebek-Dorchi were served effectually for 
the moment ; but apparently it was only for the moment, 
since, in the further development of his plots, this very 10 
dependency upon Russian influence would be the most 
serious obstacle in his way. There was, however, an- 
other point carried, which outweighed all inferior con- 
siderations, as it gave him a power of setting aside 
discretionally whatsoever should arise to disturb his 15 
plots : he was himself appointed president and con- 
troller of the sargatclii. The Russian court had been 
aware of his high pretensions by birth, and hoped by 
this promotion to satisfy the ambition which, in some 
degree, was acknowledged to be a reasonable passion for 20 
any man occupying his situation. 

Having thus completely blindfolded the cabinet of 
Russia, Zebek-Dorchi proceeded in his new character to 
fulfil his political mission with the khan of the Kal- 
mucks. So artfully did he prepare the road for his 25 
favorable reception at the court of this prince, that he 
was at once and universally welcomed as a benefactor. 
The pensions of the councillors were so much additional 
wealth poured into the Tartar exchequer : as to the ties 



18 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

of dependency thus created, experience had not yet en- 
lightened these simple tribes as to that result. And 
that he himself should be the chief of these mercenary 
councillors was so far from being charged upon Zebek 

5 as any offence, or any ground of suspicion, that his rela- 
tive the khan returned him hearty thanks for his ser- 
vices, under the belief that he could have accepted this 
appointment only with a view to keep out other and 
more unwelcome pretenders, who would not have had 

10 the same motives of consanguinity or friendship for 
executing its duties in a spirit of kindness to the Kal- 
mucks. The first use which he made of his new func- 
tions about the khan's person was to attack the court of 
Russia, by a romantic villany not easy to be credited, 

15 for those very acts of interference with the council which 
he himself had prompted. This was a dangerous step ; 
but it was indispensable to his further advance upon 
the gloomy path which he had traced out for himself. 
A triple vengeance was what he meditated : (1) upon 

20 the Eussian cabinet, for having undervalued his own 
pretensions to the throne ; (2) upon his amiable rival, 
•for having supplanted him; and (3) upon all those of 
the nobility who had manifested their sense of his weak- 
ness by their neglect, or their sense of his perfidious 

25 character by their suspicions. Here was a colossal out- 
line of wickedness ; and by one in his situation, feeble 
(as it might seem) for the accomplishment of its hum- 
blest parts, how was the total edifice to be reared in its 
comprehensive grandeur ? He, a worm as he was, could 






REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 19 

he venture to assail the mighty behemoth of Muscovy, 
the potentate who counted three hundred languages 
around the footsteps of his throne, and from whose 
"lion ramp" recoiled alike "baptized and infidel," — 
Christendom on the one side, strong by her intellect 5 
and her organization, and the "barbaric East" on the 
other, with her unnumbered numbers? The match was 
a monstrous one ; but in its very monstrosity there lay 
this germ of encouragement, — that it could not be sus- 
pected. The very hopelessness of the scheme grounded 10 
his hope; and he' resolved to execute a vengeance which 
should involve, as it were, in the unity of a well-laid 
tragic fable, all whom he judged to be his enemies. 
That vengeance lay in detaching from the Russian Em- 
pire the whole Kalmuck nation, and breaking up that 15 
system of intercourse which had thus far been beneficial 
to both. This last was a consideration which moved 
him but little. True it was that Russia to the Kal- 
mucks had secured lands and extensive pasturage; true 
it was that the Kalmucks reciprocally to Russia had 20 
furnished a powerful cavalry. But the latter loss would 
be part of his triumph, and the former might be more 
than compensated in other climates, under other sove- 
reigns. Here was a scheme, which, in its final accom- 
plishment, would avenge him bitterly on the Czarina, 25 
and in the course of its accomplishment might furnish 
him with ample occasions for removing Ins other ene- 
mies. It may be readily supposed, indeed, that he v.- ho 
could deliberately raise his eyes to the Russian autocrat 



20 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

as an antagonist in single duel with himself was not 
likely to feel much anxiety about Kalmuck enemies 
of whatever rank. He took his resolution, therefore, 
sternly and irrevocably to effect this astonishing trans- 

5 lation of an ancient people across the pathless deserts 
of Central Asia, intersected continually by rapid rivers 
rarely furnished with bridges, and of which the fords 
were known only to those who might think it for their 
interest to conceal them, through many nations inhospi- 

10 table or hostile, — frost and snow around them (from 
the necessity of commencing their flight in the winter), 
famine in their front, and the sabre, or even the artil- 
lery, of an offended and mighty empress hanging upon 
their rear for thousands of miles. But what was to be 

15 their final mark, the port of shelter after so fearful a 
course of wandering ? Two things were evident : it 
must be some power at a great distance from Russia, 
so as to make return even in that view hopeless ; and it 
must be a power of sufficient rank to insure them protec- 

20 tion from any hostile efforts on the part of the Czarina 
for reclaiming them or for chastising their revolt. Both 
conditions were united obviously in the person of Kien 
Long, the reigning Emperor of China, who was further 
recommended to them by his respect for the head of 

25 their religion. To China, therefore, and, as their first 
rendezvous, to the shadow of the great Chinese Wall, 
it was settled by Zebek that they should direct their 
flight. 

Next came the question of time, When should the 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 21 

flight commence ? and, finally, the more delicate ques- 
tion as to the choice of accomplices. To extend the 
knowledge of the conspiracy too far was to insure its 
betrayal to the Russian government. Yet, at some 
stage of the preparations it was evident that a very 5 
extensive confidence must be made, because in no other 
way could the mass of the Kalmuck population be 
persuaded to furnish their families with the requisite 
equipments for so long a migration. This critical step, 
however, it was resolved to defer up to the latest pos- 10 
sible moment, and at all events to make no general com- 
munication on the subject until the time of departure 
should be definitely settled. In the meantime Zebek 
admitted only three persons to his confidence, of whom 
Oubacha, the reigning prince, was almost necessarily 15 
one ; but him, from his yielding and somewhat feeble 
character, he viewed rather in the light of a tool than 
as one of his active accomplices. Those whom (if any- 
body) he admitted to an unreserved participation in his 
counsels were two only, — the great lama among the 20 
Kalmucks, and his own father-in-law, Erempel, a ruling 
prince of some tribe in the neighborhood of the Caspian 
Sea, recommended to his favor not so much by any 
strength of talent corresponding to the occasion, as by 
his blind devotion to himself and his passionate anxiety 25 
to promote the elevation of his daughter and his son- 
in-law to the throne of a sovereign prince. A titular 
prince, Zebek already was ; but this dignity, without 
the substantial accompaniment of a sceptre, seemed but 



22 BEVOLT OF THE TARTABS. 

an empty sound to both of these ambitious rebels. The 
other accomplice, whose name was Loosang-Dchaltzan, 
and whose rank was that of lama, or Kalmuck pontiff, 
was a person of far more distinguished pretensions. He 

5 had something of the same gloomy and terrific pride 
which marked the character of Zebek himself, manifest- 
ing also the same energy, accompanied by the same un- 
faltering cruelty, and a natural facility of dissimulation 
even more profound. It was by this man that the other 

10 question was settled as to the time for giving effect to 
their designs. His own pontifical character had sug- 
gested to him, that in order to strengthen their influence 
with the vast mob of simple-minded men whom they 
were to lead into a howling wilderness, after persuading 

15 them to lay desolate their own ancient hearths, it was 
indispensable that they should be able, in cases of ex- 
tremity, to plead the express sanction of God for their 
entire enterprise. This could only be done by address- 
ing themselves to the great* head of their religion, — 

20 the dalai lama of Thibet. Him they easily persuaded 
to countenance their schemes ; and an oracle was de- 
livered solemnly at Thibet, to the effect that no ultimate 
prosperity would attend this great exodus unless it were 
pursued through tjie years of the tiger and the hare. 

25 Now, the Kalmuck custom is to distinguish their years 

by attaching to each a denomination taken from one 

,of twelve animals, the exact order of succession being 

absolutely fixed ; so that the cycle revolves, of course, 

through a period of a dozen years. Consequently, if 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 23 

the approaching year of the tiger were suffered to escape 
them, in that case the expedition must be delayed for 
twelve years more ; within which period, even were no 
other unfavorable changes to arise, it was pretty well 
foreseen that the Russian government would take the 5 
most effectual means for bridling their vagrant propen- 
sities by a ring fence of forts, or military posts, to say 
nothing of the still readier plan for securing their 
fidelity (a plan already talked of in all quarters) by 
exacting a large body of hostages selected from the 10 
families of the most influential nobles. On these cogent 
considerations it was solemnly determined that this ter- 
rific experiment should be made in the next year of the 
tiger, which happened to fall upon the Christian year 
1771. With respect to the month, there was, unhappily 15 
for the Kalmucks, even less latitude allowed to their 
choice than with respect to the year. It was absolutely 
necessary, or it was thought so, that the different divis- 
ions of the nation, which pastured their flocks on both 
banks of the Volga, should have the means of effecting 20 
an instantaneous junction, because the danger of being 
intercepted by flying columns of the imperial armies 
was precisely the greatest at the outset. Now, from 
the want of bridges, or sufficient river craft for trans- 
porting so vast a body of men, the sole means which 25 
could be depended upon (especially where so many 
women, children, and camels were concerned) was ice; 
and this, in a state of sufficient firmness, could not be 
absolutely counted upon before the month of January. 



24 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

Hence it happened that this astonishing exoclus of a 
whole nation — before so much as a whisper of the de- 
sign had begun to circulate among those whom it most 
interested, before it was even suspected that any man's 

5 wishes pointed in that direction — had been definitively 
appointed for January of the year 1771 ; and, almost 
up to the Christmas of 1770, the poor, simple Kalmuck 
herdsmen and their families were going nightly to their 
peaceful beds without even dreaming that the fiat had 

10 already gone forth from their rulers which consigned 
those quiet abodes, together with the peace and comfort 
which reigned within them, to a withering desolation, 
now close at hand. 

Meantime war raged on a great scale between Russia 

15 and the Sultan 5 and, until the time arrived for throwing 
oft* their vassalage, it was necessary that Oubacha should 
contribute his usual contingent of martial aid. Nay, it 
had unfortunately become prudent that he should con- 
tribute much more than his usual aid. Human experi- 

20 ence gives ample evidence that in some mysterious and 
unaccountable way no great design is ever agitated, no 
matter how few or how faithful may be the participa- 
tors, but that some presentiment, some dim misgiving, 
is kindled among those whom it is chiefly important to 

25 blind. And, however it might have happened, certain 
it is that already, when as yet no syllable of the con- 
spiracy had been breathed to Tiny man whose very exist- 
ence was not staked upon its concealment, nevertheless 
some vague and uneasy jealousy had arisen in the Rus- 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 25 

sian cabinet as to the future schemes of the Kalmuck 
khan ; and very probable it is, that but for the war 
then raging, and the consequent prudence of conciliating 
a very important vassal, or at least of abstaining from 
what would powerfully alienate him, even at that mo- 5 
me nt, such measures would have been adopted as must 
forever have intercepted the Kalmuck schemes. Slight 
as were the jealousies of the imperial court, they had 
not escaped the Machiavellian eyes of Zebek and the 
lama ; and under their guidance, Oubacha, bending to 10 
the circumstances of the moment, and meeting the jeal- 
ousy of the Russian court with a policy corresponding 
to their own, strove by unusual zeal to efface the Czar- 
ina's unfavorable impressions. He enlarged the scale 
of his contributions, and that so prodigiously, that he 15 
absolutely carried to headquarters a force of thirty-five 
thousand cavalry, fully equipped. Some go further, and 
rate the amount beyond forty thousand ; but the smaller 
estimate is, at all events, within the truth. 

With this magnificent array of cavalry, heavy as well 20 
as light, the khan went into the field under great expec- 
tations ; and these he more than realized. Having the 
good fortune to be concerned with so ill-organized and 
disorderly a description of force as that which at all 
times composed the bulk of a Turkish army, he carried 25 
victory along with his banners, gained many partial 
successes, and at last, in a pitched battle, overthrew the 
Turkish force opposed to him, with a loss of five thou- 
sand men left upon the field. 



26 BE VOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

i 

These splendid achievements seemed likely to operate 
in various ways against the impending revolt. Oubacha 
had now a strong motive, in the martial glory acquired, 
for continuing his connection with the empire in whose 
5 service he had won it, and by whom only it could be 
fully appreciated. He was now a great marshal of a 
great empire, — one of the paladins around the imperial 
throne ; in China he would be nobody, or (worse than 
that) a mendicant alien, prostrate at the feet, and so- 
lo liciting the precarious alms, of a prince with whom he 
had no connection. Besides, it might reasonably be ex- 
pected that the Czarina, grateful for the really efficient 
aid given by the Tartar prince, would confer upon him 
such eminent rewards as might be sufficient to anchor 
15 his hopes upon Russia and to wean him from every pos- 
sible seduction. These were the obvious suggestions of 
prudence and good sense to every man who stood neutral 
in the case. But they were disappointed. The Czarina 
knew her obligations to the khan ; but she did not 
20 acknowledge them. Wherefore? That is a mystery 
perhaps never to be explained. So it was, however. 
The khan went unhonored ; no ukase ever proclaimed 
his merits ; and perhaps, had he even been abundantly 
recompensed by Russia, there were others who would 
25 have defeated these tendencies to reconciliation. Erein- 
pel, Zebek, and Loosang the lama were pledged life-deep 
to prevent any accommodation ; and their efforts were 
unfortunately seconded by those of their deadliest ene- 
mies. In the Russian court there were at that time 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 27 

some great nobles preocupied with feelings of hatred 
and blind malice towards the Kalmucks, quite as strong 
as any which the Kalmucks could harbor towards Rus- 

I sia, and not, perhaps, so well founded. Just as much 
as the Kalmucks hated the Russian yoke, their galling 5 

1 assumption of authority, the marked air of disdain, as 
towards a nation of ugly, stupid, and filthy barbarians, 
which too generally marked the Russian bearing and 
language, — but, above all, the insolent contempt, or 
even outrages, which the Russian governors or great mil- 10 
itary commandants tolerated in their followers towards 
the barbarous religion and Superstitious mummeries of 
the Kalmuck priesthood, — precisely in that extent did 
the ferocity of the Russian resentment, and their wrath 
at seeing the trampled worm turn, or attempt a feeble 15 
retaliation, react upon the unfortunate Kalmucks. At 
this crisis it is probable that envy and wounded pride, 
upon witnessing the splendid victories of Oubacha and 
Momotbacha over the Turks and Bashkirs, contributed 
strength to the Russian irritation ; and it must have 20 
been through the intrigues of those nobles about her 
person who chiefly smarted under these feelings, that 
the Czarina could ever have lent herself to the unwise 
and ungrateful policy pursued at this critical period 
towards the Kalmuck khan. That Czarina was no longer 25 
Elizabeth Petrowna : it was Catharine II., a princess 
who did not often err so injuriously (injuriously for her- 
self as much as for others) in the measures of her gov- 
ernment. She had soon ample reason for repenting of 



28 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

her false policy. Meantime, how much it must have 
co-operated with the other motives previously acting 
upon Oubacha in sustaining his determination to revolt, 
and how powerfully it must have assisted the efforts of 

5 all the Tartar chieftains in preparing the minds of their 
people to feel the necessity of this difficult enterprise, 
by arming their pride and their suspicions against the 
Russian government, through the keenness of their sym- 
pathy with the wrongs of their insulted prince, may be 

10 readily imagined. It is a fact, and it has been confessed 
by candid Russians themselves when treating of this 
great dismemberment, that the conduct of the Russian 
cabinet throughout the period of suspense, and during 
the crisis of hesitation in the Kalmuck council, was 

15 exactly such as was most desirable for the purposes of 
the conspirators : it was such, in fact, as to set the seal 
to all their machinations, by supplying distinct evi- 
dences and official vouchers for what could otherwise 
have been, at the most, matters of doubtful suspicion 

20 and indirect presumption. 

Nevertheless, in the face of all these arguments, and 
even allowing their weight so far as not at all to deny 
the injustice or the impolicy of the imperial ministers, 
it is contended by many persons who have reviewed the 

25 affair with a command of all the documents bearing on 
the case, more especially the'letters or minutes of council 
subsequently discovered, in the handwriting of Zebek- 
Dorchi, and the important evidence of the Russian captive 
Weseloff, who was carried off by the Kalmucks in their 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 29 

flight, that beyond all doubt Oubacha was powerless for 
any purpose of impeding or even of delaying the revolt. 
He himself, indeed, was under religious obligations of 
the most terrific solemnity never to flinch from the en- 
terprise, or even to slacken in his zeal ; for Zebek-Dorchi, 5 
distrusting the firmness of his resolution under any 
unusual pressure of alarm or difficulty, had, in the very 
earliest stage of the conspiracy, availed himself of the 
khan's well-known superstition to engage him, by means 
of previous concert with the priests and their head the 10 
lama, in some dark and mysterious rites of consecration, 
terminating in oaths under such terrific sanctions as no 
Kalmuck would have courage to violate. As far, there- 
fore, as regarded the personal share of the khan in what 
was to come, Zebek was entirely at his ease. He knew 15 
him. to be so deeply pledged by religious terrors to the 
prosecution of the conspiracy that no honors within 
the Czarina's gift could have possibly shaken his ad- 
hesion ; and then, as to threats from the same quarter, 
he knew him to be sealed against those fears by others 20 
of a gloomier character, and better adapted to his pecu- 
liar temperament. For Oubacha was a brave man as 
respected all bodily enemies or the dangers of human 
warfare, but was as sensitive and timid as the most 
superstitious of old women in facing the frowns of a 25 
priest, or under the vague anticipations of ghostly retri- 
butions. But had it been otherwise, and had there 
been any reason to apprehend an unsteady demeanor on 
the part of this prmce at the approach of the critical 



30 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

moment, such were the changes already effected in the 
state of their domestic politics amongst the Tartars by 
the undermining arts of Zebek-Dorchi and his ally the 
lama, that very little importance would have attached to 

5 that doubt. All power was now effectually lodged in 
the hand of Zebek-Dorchi. He was the true and abso- 
lute wielder of the Kalmuck sceptre ; all measures of 
importance were submitted to his discretion, and nothing 
was finally resolved but under his dictation. This result 

10 he had brought about, in a year or two, by means suffi- 
ciently simple : first of all, by availing himself of the 
prejudice in his favor, so largely diffused among the 
lowest of the Kalmucks, that his own title to the throne, 
in quality of great-grandson in a direct line from Ajouka, 

15 the most illustrious of all the Kalmuck khans, stood 
upon a better basis than that of Oubacha, who derived 
from a collateral branch ; secondly, with respect to that 
sole advantage which Oubacha possessed above himself 
in the ratification of his title, by improving this differ- 

20 ence between their situations to the disadvantage of his 
competitor, as one who had not scrupled to accept that 
triumph from an alien power at the price of his inde- 
pendence, which he himself (as he would have it under- 
stood) disdained to court; thirdly, by his own talents 

25 and address, coupled with the ferocious energy of his 
moral character ; fourthly, and perhaps in an equal 
degree, by the criminal facility and good nature of 
Oubacha; finally (which is remarkable enough, as illus- 



trating the character of the man), by that very new 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 31 

modelling of the sarga, or privy council, which he had 
used as a principal topic of abuse and. malicious insinua- 
tion against the Russian Government, while in reality 
he first had suggested the alteration to the empress, and 
he chiefly appropriated the political advantages which it 5 
was fitted to yield. For, as he was himself appointed the 
chief of the sargatchi, and as the pensions to the infe- 
rior sargatchi passed through his hands, while in effect 
they owed their appointments to his nomination, it may 
be easily supposed, that whatever power existed in the 10 
state capable of controlling the khan being held by the 
sarga under its new organization, and this body being 
completely under his influence, the final result was to 
throw all the functions of the state, whether nominally 
in the prince or in the council, substantially into the 15 
hands of this one man ; while, at the same time, from 
the strict league which he maintained with the lama, all 
the thunders of his spiritual power were always ready to 
come in aid of the magistrate, or to supply his incapacity 
in cases which he could not reach. 20 

But the time was now rapidly approaching for the 
mighty experiment. The day was drawing near on 
which the signal was to be given for raising the stan- 
dard of revolt, and, by a combined movement on both 
sides of the Volga, for spreading the smoke of one vast 25 
conflagration that should wrap in a common blaze their 
own huts and the stately cities of their enemies over the 
breadth and length of those great provinces in which 
their flocks were dispersed. The year of the tiger was 






32 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

now within one little month of its commencement. The 
fifth morning of that year was fixed for the fatal day 
when the fortunes and happiness of a whole nation were 
to be put upon the hazard of a dicer's throw ; and as yet 

5 that nation was in profound ignorance of the whole plan. 
The khan, such was the kindness of his nature, could 
not bring himself to make the revelation so urgently 
required. It was clear, however, that this could not be 
delayed ; and Zebek-Dorehi took the task willingly upon 

10 himself. But where or how should this notification be 
made, so as to exclude Russian hearers ? After some 
deliberation the following plan was adopted : Couriers, 
it was contrived, should arrive in furious haste, one 
upon the heels of another, reporting a sudden inroad 

15 of the Kirghises and Bashkirs upon the Kalmuck lands 
at a point distant about one hundred and twenty miles. 
Thither all the Kalmuck families, according to immemo- 
rial custom, were required to send a separate represen- 
tative ; and there, accordingly, within three days, all 

20 appeared. The distance, the solitary ground appointed 
for the rendezvous, the rapidity of the march, all tended 
to make it almost certain that no Russian could be 
present. Zebek-Dorchi then came forward. He did not 
waste many words upon rhetoric. He unfurled an im- 

25 mense sheet of parchment, visible from the outermost 
distance at which any of this vast crowd could stand. 
The total number amounted to eighty thousand : all saw, 
and many heard. They were told of the oppressions of 
Russia ; of her pride and haughty disdain, evidenced 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 33 

towards them by a thousand acts ; of her contempt for 
their religion ; of her determination to reduce them to 
absolute' slavery ; of the preliminary measures she had 
already taken by erecting forts upon many of the great 
rivers in their neighborhood ; of the ulterior intentions 5 
she thus announced to circumscribe their pastoral lands, 
until they would all be obliged to renounce their flocks 
and to collect in towns like Sarepta, there to pursue 
mechanical and servile trades of shoemaker, tailor, and 
weaver, such as the f reeborn Tartar had always dis- 10 
dained. " Then, again," said the subtle prince, " she 
increases her military levies upon our population every 
year. We pour out our blood as young men in her 
defence, or more often in support of her insolent aggres- 
sions ; and as old men we reap nothing from our suffer- 15 
ings, nor benefit by our survivorship where so many are 
sacrificed." At this point of his harangue, Zebek pro- 
duced several papers (forged, as it is generally believed, 
by himself and the lama) containing projects of the 
Russian court for a general transfer of the eldest sons, 20 
taken en masse from the greatest Kalmuck families, to 
the imperial court. " Now, let this be once accom- 
plished," he argued, " and there is an end of all useful 
resistance from that day forward. Petitions we might 
make, or even remonstrances ; as men of words, we 25 
might .play a bold part : but for deeds, for that sort 
of language by which our ancestors were used to speak, 
holding us by such a chain, Russia would make a jest 
of our wishes, knowing full well that we should not dare 
to make any effectual movement." 



34 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

Having thus sufficiently roused the angry passions of 
his vast audience, and having alarmed their fears by 
this pretended scheme against their firstborn (an artifice 
which was indispensable to his purpose, because it met 

5 beforehand every form of amendment to his proposal 
coming from the more moderate nobles, who would not 
otherwise have failed to insist upon trying the effect of 
bold addresses to the empress before resorting to any 
desperate extremity), Zebek-Dorchi opened his scheme 

10 of revolt, and, if so, of instant revolt ; since any prepa- 
rations reported at St. Petersburg would be a signal for 
the armies of Russia to cross into such positions from 
all parts of Asia as would effectually intercept their 
march. It is remarkable, however, that, with all his 

15 audacity and his reliance upon the momentary excite- 
ment of the Kalmucks, the subtle prince did not venture 
at this stage of his seduction to make so startling a pro- 
posal as that of a flight to China. All that he held out 
for the present was a rapid march to the Temba or some 

20 other great river, which they were to cross, and to take 
up a strong position on the farther bank, from which, 
as from a post of conscious security, they could hold 
a bolder language to the Czarina, and one which would 
have a better chance of winning a favorable audience. 

25 These things, in the irritated condition of the simple 
Tartars, passed by acclamation ; and all returned home- 
wards to push forward with the most furious speed the 
preparations for their awful undertaking. Rapid and 
energetic these of necessity were ; and in that degree 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 35 

they became noticeable and manifest to the Russians 
who happened to be intermingled with the different 
hordes, either on commercial errands or as agents offi- 
cially from the Russian government, — some in a finan- 
cial, others in a diplomatic character. 5 

Among these last (indeed, at the head of them) was a 
Russian of some distinction, by name Kichinskoi, a man 
memorable for his vanity, and memorable also as one 
of the many victims to the Tartar revolution. This Ki- 
chinskoi had been sent by the empress as her envoy to 10 
overlook the conduct of the Kalmucks. He was styled 
the grand pristaw, or great commissioner, and was uni- 
versally known among the Tartar tribes by this title. 
His mixed character of ambassador and of political sur- 
veillant, combined with the dependent state of the Kal- 15 
mucks, gave him a real weight in the Tartar councils, 
and might have given him a far greater, had not his out- 
rageous self-conceit and his arrogant confidence in his 
own authority, as due chiefly to his personal qualities 
for command, led him into such harsh displays of power 20 
and menaces so odious to the Tartar pride as very soon 
made him an object of their profoundest malice. He 
had publicly insulted the khan ; and upon making a 
communication to him to the effect that some reports 
began to circulate, and even to reach the empress, of a 25 
design in agitation to fly from the imperial dominions, 
he had ventured to say, " But this you dare not attempt. 
I laugh at such rumors : yes, khan, I laugh at them to 
the empress ; for you are a chained bear, and that you 



36 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

know." The khan turned away on his heel with marked 
disdain ; and the pristaw, foaming at the mouth, con- 
tinued to utter, amongst those of the khan's attendants 
who stayed behind to catch his real sentiments in a mo- 

5 ment of unguarded passion, all that the blindest frenzy 
of rage could suggest to the most presumptuous of fools. 
It was now ascertained that suspicions had arisen ; but 
at the same time it was ascertained that the pristaw 
spoke no more than the truth in representing himself 

10 to have discredited these suspicions. The fact was, that 
the mere infatuation of vanity made him believe that 
nothing could go on undetected by his all-piercing sa- 
gacity, and that no rebellion could prosper when rebuked 
by his commanding presence. The Tartars, therefore, 

15 pursued their preparations, confiding in the obstinate 
blindness of the grand pristaw, as in their perfect safe- 
guard ; and such it proved, to his own ruin as well as 
that of myriads beside. 

Christmas arrived ; and a little before that time cour- 

20 ier upon courier came dropping in, one upon the very 
heels of another, to St. Petersburg, assuring the czarina 
that beyond all doubt the Kalmucks were in the very 
crisis of departure. These despatches came from the 
governor of Astrachan ; and copies were instantly for- 

25 warded to Kichinskoi. Now, it happened that between 
this governor, a Russian named Beketoff, and the pris- 
taw, had been an ancient feud. The very name of 
Beketoff inflamed his resentment ; and no sooner did 
he see that hated name attached to the despatch than 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 37 

he felt himself confirmed in his former views with ten- 
fold bigotry, and wrote instantly, in terms of the most 
pointed ridicule, against the new alarmist, pledging his 
own head upon the visionariness of his alarms. Beke- 
toff) however, was not to be put down by a few hard 5 
words or. by ridicule. He persisted in his statements. 
The Russian ministry were confounded by the obstinacy 
of the disputants ; and some were beginning even to 
treat the governor of Astrachan as a bore and as the 
dupe of his own nervous terrors, when the memorable 10 
day arrived, the fatal 5th of January, which forever 
terminated the dispute, and put a seal upon the earthly 
hopes and fortunes of unnumbered myriads. The gover- 
nor of Astrachan was the first to hear the news. Stung 
by the mixed furies of jealousy, of triumphant ven- 15 
geance, and of anxious ambition, he sprang into his 
sledge, and at the rate of three hundred miles a day 
pursued his route to St. Petersburg, rushed into the 
imperial presence, announced the total realization of his 
worst predictions, and upon the confirmation of this 20 
intelligence by subsequent despatches from many differ- 
ent posts on the Volga, he received an imperial commis- 
sion to seize the person of his deluded enemy and to 
keep him in strict captivity. These orders were eagerly 
fulfilled ; and the unfortunate Kichinskoi soon after- 25 
ward expired of grief and mortification in the gloomy 
solitude of a dungeon, — a victim to his own immeasur- 
able vanity and the blinding self-delusions of a presump- 
) tion that refused all warning. 



38 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

The governor of Astrachan had been but too faithful 
a prophet. Perhaps even he was surprised at the sud- 
denness with which the verification followed his reports. 
Precisely on the 5th of January, the day so solemnly 

5 appointed under religious sanctions by the lama, tin* 
Kalmucks on the east bank of the Volga were seen at 
the earliest dawn of day assembling by troops and 
squadrons and in the tumultuous movement of some 
great morning of battle. Tens of thousands continued 

10 moving off the ground at every half hour's interval. 
Women and children, to the amount of two hundred 
thousand and upwards, were placed upon wagons or 
upon camels, and drew off by masses of twenty thou- 
sand at once, placed under suit-able escorts, and con- 

15 tinually swelled in numbers by other outlying bodies of 
the horde who kept falling in at various distances upon 
the first and second day's march. From sixty to eighty 
thousand of those who were the best mounted stayed be- 
hind the rest of the tribes, with purposes of devastation 

20 and plunder more violent than prudence justified or the 
amiable character of the khan could be supposed to 
approve. But in this, as in other instances, he was com- 
pletely overruled by the malignant counsels of Zebek- 
Dorchi. The first tempest of the desolating fury of 

25 the Tartars discharged itself upon their own habita- 
tions. But this, as cutting off all infirm looking back- 
ward from the hardships of their march, had been 
thought so necessary a measure by all the chieftains, 
that even Oubacha himself was the first to authorize 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 39 

the act by his own example. He seized a torch, pre- 
viously prepared with materials the most durable as 
well as combustible, arid steadily applied it to the tim- 
bers of his own palace. Nothing was saved from the 
general wreck except the portable part of the domestic 5 
utensils and that part of the woodwork which could 
be applied to the manufacture of the long Tartar lances. 
This chapter in their memorable day's work being fin- 
ished, and the whole of their villages throughout a dis- 
trict of ten thousand square miles in one simultaneous 10 
blaze, the Tartars waited for further orders. 

These, it was intended, should have taken a character 
of valedictory vengeance, and thus have left behind to 
the Czarina a dreadful commentary upon the main 
motives of their flight. It was the purpose of Zebek- 15 
Dorchi that all the Russian towns, churches, and build- 
ings of every description should be given up to pillage 
and destruction, and such treatment applied to the de- 
fenceless inhabitants as might naturally be expected 
from a fierce people already infuriated by the spectacle 20 
of their own outrages and by the bloody retaliations 
which they must necessarily have provoked. This part 
of the tragedy, however, was happily intercepted by a 
providential disappointment at the very crisis of de- 
parture. It has been mentioned already that the motive 25 
for selecting the depth of winter as the season of flight 
(which otherwise was obviously the very worst possible) 
had been the impossibility of effecting a junction suffi- 
ciently rapid with the tribes on the west of the Volga, in 



40 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

the absence of bridges, unless by a natural bridge of icefe. 
For this one advantage the Kalmuck leaders had col- 
sented to aggravate by a thousandfold the calamities 
inevitable to a rapid flight over boundless tracts of 

5 country with women, children, and herds of cattle, — 
for this one single advantage ; and yet, after all, it was 
lost. The reason never has been explained satisfac- 
torily ; but the fact was such. Some have said that 
the signals were not properly concerted for marking the 

10 moment of absolute departure ; that is, for signifying 
whether the settled intention of the eastern Kalmucks 
might not have been suddenly interrupted by adverse 
intelligence. Others have supposed that the ice might 
not be equally strong on both sides of the river, and 

15 might even be generally insecure for the treading of 
heavy and heavily laden animals such as camels. But 
the prevailing notion is, that some accidental movements, 
on the 3d and 4th of January, of Russian troops in the 
neighborhood of the western Kalmucks, though really 

20 having no reference to them or their plans, had been 
construed into certain signs that all was discovered, and 
that the prudence of the western chieftains, who, from 
situation, had never been exposed to those intrigues 
which Zebek-Dorchi had practised upon the pride of 

25 the eastern tribes, now stepped in to save their people 
from ruin. Be the cause what it might, it is certain 
that the western Kalmucks were in some way prevented 
from forming the intended junction with their brethren 
of the opposite bank ; and the result was, that at least 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 41 

one hundred thousand of these Tartars were left behind 
in Russia. This accident it was which saved their Rus- 
sian neighbors universally from the desolation which 
else awaited them. One general massacre and confla- 
gration would assuredly have surprised them, to the utter 5 
extermination of their property, their houses, and them- 
selves, had it not been for this disappointment. But 
the eastern chieftains did not dare to put to hazard the 
safety of their brethren under the first impulse of the 
Czarina's vengeance for so dreadful a tragedy ; for, as 10 
they were well aware of too many circumstances by 
which she might discover the concurrence of the west- 
ern people in the general scheme of revolt, they justly 
feared that she would thence infer their concurrence also 
in the bloody events which marked its outset. 15 

Little did the western Kalmucks guess what reasons 
they also had for gratitude on account of an interpo- 
sition so unexpected, and which, at the moment, they 
so generally deplored. Could they but have witnessed 
the thousandth part of the sufferings which overtook 20 
their eastern brethren in the first month of their sad 
flight, they would have blessed Heaven for their own 
narrow escape ; and yet these sufferings of the first 
month were but a prelude or foretaste comparatively 
slight of those which afterwards succeeded. 25 

For now began to unroll the most awful series of 
calamities, and the most extensive, which is anywhere 
recorded to have visited the sons and daughters of men. 
It is possible that the sudden inroads of destroying 



42 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

nations — such as the Huns, or the Avars, or the Mon- 
gol Tartars — may have inflicted misery as extensive ; 
but there the misery and the desolation would be sud- 
den, like the flight of volleying lightning. Those who 

5 were spared at first would generally be spared to the 
end ; those who perished at all would perish at once. 
It is possible that the French retreat from Moscow may 
have made some nearer approach to this calamity in 
duration, though still a feeble and miniature approach, 

10 for the French sufferings did not commence in good 
earnest until about one month from the time of leaving 
Moscow ; and though it is- true that afterwards the vials 
of wrath were emptied upon the devoted army for six 
or seven weeks in succession, }^et what is that to this 

15 Kalmuck tragedy, which lasted for more than as many 
months ? But the main feature of horror, by which the 
Tartar march was distinguished from the French, lies in 
the accompaniment of women and children. There were 
both, it is true, with the French army, but not so many 

20 as to bear any marked proportion to the total numbers 
concerned. The French, in short, were merely an army, 
— a host of professional destroyers, whose regular trade 
was bloodshed, and whose regular element was danger 
and suffering. But the Tartars were a nation carrying 

25 along with them more than two hundred and fifty thou-v 
sand women and children, utterly unequal, for the most 
part, to any contest. with the calamities before them. 
The children of Israel were in the same circumstances 
as to the accompaniment of their families ; but they were 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 43 

released from the pursuit of their enemies in a very early 
stage of their flight ; and their subsequent residence in 
the desert was not a march, but a continued halt, and 
under a continued interposition of Heaven for their com- 
fortable support. Earthquakes, again, however compre- 5 
hensive in their ravages, are shocks of a moment's 
duration. A much nearer approach made to the wide 
range and the long duration of the Kalmuck tragedy 
may have been in a pestilence such as that which visited 
Athens in the Peloponnesian War, or London in the 10 
reign of Charles II. There, also, the martyrs were 
counted by myriads, and the period of the desolation 
was counted by months. But, after all, the total amount 
of destruction was on a smaller scale ; and there was this 
feature of alleviation to the conscious pressure of the 15 
calamity, — that the misery was withdrawn from public 
notice into private chambers and hospitals. The siege 
of Jerusalem by Vespasian and his son, taken in its en- 
tire circumstances, comes nearest of all for breadth and 
depth of suffering, for duration, for the exasperation of 20 
the suffering from without by internal feuds, and, finally, 
for that last most appalling expression of the furnace 
heat of the anguish in its power to extinguish the nat- 
ural affections even of maternal love. But, after all, 
each case had circumstances of romantic misery peculiar 25 
to itself, — circumstances without precedent, and (wher- 
ever human nature is ennobled by Christianity), it may 
be confidently hoped, never to be repeated. 

The first point to be reached, before any hope of re- 



44 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

pose could be encouraged, was the river Ural. This was 
not above three hundred miles from the main point of 
departure on the Volga ; and, if the march thither was 
to be a forced one and a severe one, it was alleged, on 

5 the other hand, that the suffering would be the more 
brief and transient : one summary exertion, not to be 
repeated, and all was achieved. Forced the march was, 
and severe beyond example, — there the forewarning 
proved correct, — but the promised rest proved a mere 

10 phantom of the wilderness, a visionary rainbow, which 
fled before their hope-sick eyes, across these interminable 
solitudes, for seven months of hardship and calamity, 
without a pause. These sufferings, by their very nature 
and the circumstances under which they arose, were 

15 (like the scenery of the steppes) somewhat monotonous 
in their coloring and external features. What variety, 
however, there was, will be most naturally exhibited by 
tracing historically the successive stages of the general 
misery exactly as it unfolded itself under the double 

20 agency of weakness still increasing from within and 
hostile pressure from without. Viewed in this manner, 
under the real order of development, it is remarkable 
that these sufferings of the Tartars, though under the 
moulding hands of accident, arrange themselves almost 

25 with a scenical propriety. They seem combined as with 
the skill of an artist, the intensity of the misery advan- 
cing regularly with the advances of the march, and the 
stages of the calamity corresponding to the stages of 
the route ; so that, upon raising the curtain which veils 



i 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 45 

the great catastrophe, we behold one vast climax of an- 
guish, towering upwards by regular gradations, as if 
constructed artificially for picturesque effect, — a result 
which might not have been surprising, had it been rea- 
sonable to anticipate the same rate of speed, and even 5 
an accelerated rate, as prevailing through the later stages 
of the expedition. But it seemed, on the contrary, most 
reasonable to calculate upon a continual decrement in 
the rate of motion according to the increasing distance 
from the headquarters of the pursuing enemy. This 10 
calculation, however, was defeated by the extraordinary 
circumstance that the Russian armies did not begin to 
close in very fiercely upon the Kalmucks until after they 
had accomplished a distance of full two thousand miles. 
One thousand miles farther on, the assaults became even 15 
more tumultuous and murderous ; and already the great 
shadows of the Chinese Wall were dimly descried, when 
the frenzy and acharnement of the pursuers and the 
bloody-desperation of the miserable fugitives had reached 
its uttermost extremity. Let us briefly rehearse the 20 
main stages of the misery, and trace the ascending steps 
of the tragedy according to the great divisions of the 
route marked out by the central rivers of Asia. 

The first stage, we have already said, was from the 
Volga to the Ural ; the distance about three hundred 25 
miles ; the time allowed seven days. For the first week, 
therefore, the rate of marching averaged about forty- 
three English miles a day. The weather was cold but 
bracing; and at a more moderate pace this part of the 



46 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

journey might have been accomplished without much 
distress by a people as hardy as the Kalmucks. As it 
was, the cattle suffered greatly from overdriving ; milk 
began to fail even for the children; the sheep perished 

5 by wholesale ; and the children themselves were saved 
only by the innumerable camels. 

The Cossacks who dwelt upon the banks of the Ural 
were the first among the subjects of Russia to come into, 
collision with the Kalmucks. Great was their surprise 

10 at the suddenness, of the irruption, and great, also, their 
consternation ; for, according to their settled custom, by 
far the greater part of their number was absent during 
the winter months at the fisheries upon the Caspian. 
Some who were liable to surprise at the most exposed 

15 points fled in crowds to the fortress of Koulagina, which 
was immediately invested and summoned by Oubacha. 
He had, however, in his train only a few light pieces of 
artillery ; and the Russian commandant at Koulagina, 
being aware. of the hurried circumstances in which the 

20 khan was placed, and that he stood upon the very edge, 
as it were, of a renewed flight, felt encouraged by these 
considerations to a more obstinate resistance than might 
else have been advisable with an enemy so little disposed 
to observe the usages of civilized warfare. The period 

25 of his anxiety was not long. On the fifth day of the 
siege he descried from the walls a succession cf Tartar 
couriers, mounted upon fleet Bactrian camels, crossing 
the vast plains around the fortress at a furious pace, and 
riding into the Kalmuck encampment at various points. 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 47 

Great agitation appeared immediately to follow. Orders 
were soon after despatched in all directions ; and it be- 
came speedily known that upon a distant flank of the 
Kalmuck movement a bloody and exterminating battle 
had been fought the day before, in which one entire tribe 5 
of the khan's dependants, numbering not less than nine 
thousand fighting men, had perished to the last man. 
This was the ouloss, or clan, called Feka-Zechorr, between 
whom and the Cossacks there was a feud of ancient 
standing. In selecting, therefore, the points of attack, 10 
on occasion of the present hasty inroad, the Cossack 
chiefs were naturally eager so to direct their efforts as 
to combine with the service of the empress some grati- 
fication to their own party hatreds, more especially as 
the present was likely to be their final opportunity for 15 
revenge, if the Kalmuck evasion should prosper. Hav- 
ing, therefore, concentrated as large a body of Cossack 
cavalry as circumstances allowed, they attacked the hos- 
tile ouloss with a precipitation which denied to it all 
means for communicating with Oubacha ; for the neces- 20 
sity of commanding an ample range of pasturage, to meet 
the necessities of their vast flocks and herds, had sepa- 
rated this ouloss from the khan's headquarters by an in- 
terval of eighty miles : and thus it was, and not from 
oversight, that it came to be thrown entirely upon its 25 
own resources. These had proved insufficient. Retreat, 
from the exhausted state of their horses and camels, no 
less than from the prodigious incumbrances of their 
live stock, was absolutely out of the question. Quarter 



48 REVOLT OF TIIE TARTARS. 

was disdained on the one side, and would not have been 
granted on the other ; and thus it had happened that the 
setting sun of that one day (the thirteenth from the first 
opening of the revolt) threw his parting rays upon the 

5 final agonies of an ancient oaloss, stretched upon a bloody 
field, who on that day's dawning had held and styled 
themselves an independent nation. 

Universal consternation was diffused through the wide 
borders of the khan's encampment by this disastrous in- 

10 telligence, not so much on account of the numbers slain, 
or the total extinction of a powerful ally, as because the 
position of the Cossack force was likely to put to hazard 
the future advances of the Kalmucks, or at least to re- 
tard and hold them in check until the heavier columns 

15 of the Russian army should arrive upon their flanks. 
The siege of Koulagina was instantly raised ; and that 
signal, so fatal to the happiness of the women and chil- 
dren, once again resounded through the tents, — the 
signal for flight, and this time for a flight more rapid 

20 than ever. About one hundred and fifty miles ahead of 
their present position there arose a tract of hilly country, 
forming a sort of margin to the vast, sealike expanse of 
champaign savannas, steppes, and occasionally of sandy 
deserts, which stretched away on each side of this margin 

25 both eastwards and westwards. Pretty nearly in the 
centre of this hilly range lay a narrow defile, through 
which passed the nearest and the most practicable route 
to the river Turgai, the farther bank of which river 
offered the next great station of security for a general 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 49 

halt. It was the more essential to gain this pass before 
the Cossacks, inasmuch as not only would the delay in 
forcing the pass give time to the Russian pursuing 
columns for combining their attacks and for bringing 
up their artillery, but also because (even if all enemies 5 
in pursuit were thrown out of the question) it was held 
by those best acquainted with the difficult and obscure 
geography of these pathless steppes that the loss of this 
one narrow strait among the hills would have the effect 
of throwing them (as their only alternative in a case 10 
where so wide a sweep of pasturage was required) upon 
a circuit of at least five hundred miles extra; besides 
that, after all, this circuitous route would carry them to 
the Turgai at a point ill fitted for the passage of their 
heavy baggage. The defile in the hills, therefore, it was 15 
resolved to gain ; and yet, unless they moved upon it 
with the velocity of light cavalry, there was little chance 
but it would be found preoccupied by the Cossacks. 
They also, it is true, had suffered greatly in the bloody 
action with the defeated ouloss ; but the excitement of 20 
victory, and the intense sympathy with their unexampled 
triumph, had again swelled their ranks, and would prob- 
ably act with the force of a vortex to draw in their simple 
countrymen from the Caspian. The question, therefore, 
of preoccupation was reduced to a race. The Cossacks 25 
were marching upon an oblique line not above fifty miles 
longer than that which led to the same point from the 
Kalmuck headquarters before Koulagina ; and therefore, 
without the most furious haste on the part of the Kal- 



50 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

mucks, there was not a chance for them, burdened and 
"trashed" as they were, to anticipate so agile a light 
cavalry as the Cossacks in seizing this important pass. 
Dreadful were the feelings of the poor women on 

5 hearing this exposition of the case ; for they easily un- 
derstood that too capital an interest (the summa reruni) 
was now at stake to allow of any regard to minor inter- 
ests, or what would be considered such in their present 
circumstances. The dreadful week already passed — 

10 their inauguration in misery — was yet fresh in their 
remembrance. The scars of suffering were impressed 
not only upon their memories, but upon their very per- 
sons and the persons of their children; and they knew 
that, where no speed had much chance of meeting the 

15 cravings of the chieftains, no test would be accepted, 
short of absolute exhaustion, that as much had been 
accomplished as could be accomplished. "Weseloff, the 
Russian captive, has recorded the silent wretchedness 
with which the women and elder boys assisted in draw- 

20 ing the tent ropes. On the 5th of January all had been 
animation and the joyousness of indefinite expectation ; 
now, on the contrary, a brief but bitter experience had 
taught them to take an amended calculation of what it 
was that lay before them. 

25 One whole day, and far into the succeeding night, had 
the renewed flight continued. The sufferings had been 
greater than before ; for the cold had been more intense, 
and many perished out of the living creatures through 
every class except only the camels, whose powers of 




REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 51 



endurance seemed equally adapted to cold and to heat. 
The second morning, however, brought an alleviation to 
the distress. Snow had begun to fall ; and, though not 
deep at present, it was easily foreseen that it soon would 
be so, and that, as a halt would in that case become 5 
unavoidable, no plan could be better than that of staying 
where they were, especially as the same cause would 
check the advance of the Cossacks. Here, then, was 
the last interval of comfort which gleamed upon the 
unhappy nation during their whole migration. For ten 10 
days the snow continued to fall with little intermission. 
At the end of that time, keen, bright, frosty weather 
succeeded : the drifting had ceased. In three days the 
smooth expanse became firm enough to support the 
treading of the camels, and the flight was recommenced. 15 
But during the halt much domestic comfort had been 
enjoyed, and, for the last time, universal plenty. The 
cows and oxen had perished in such vast numbers on the 
previous marches, that an order was now issued to turn 
what remained to account by slaughtering the whole, and 20 
salting whatever part should be found to exceed the im- 
mediate consumption. This measure led to a scene of 
general banqueting, and even of festivity, among all 
who were not incapacitated for joyous emotions by dis- 
tress of mind, by grief for the unhappy experience of 25 
the few last days, and by anxiety for the too gloomy 
future. Seventy thousand persons of all ages had al- 
ready perished, exclusively of the many thousand allies 
who had been cut down by the Cossack sabre; and the 



52 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

losses in reversion were likely to be many more. For 
rumors began now to arrive from all quarters, by the 
mounted couriers whom the khan had despatched to the 
rear and to each flank as well as in advance, that large 

5 masses of the imperial troops were converging from all 
parts of Central Asia to the fords of the river Turgai, 
• as the most convenient point for intercepting the flying 
tribes ; and it was by this time well known that a pow- 
erful division was close in their rear, and was retarded 

10 only by the numerous artillery which had been judged 
necessary to support their operations. New motives 
were thus daily arising for quickening the motions of 
the wretched Kalmucks and for exhausting those who 
were already but too much exhausted. 

15 It was not until the second day of February that the 
khan's advanced guard came in sight of Ouchim, the 
defile among the hills of Moulgaldchares, in which they 
anticipated so bloody an opposition from the Cossacks. 
A pretty large body of these light cavalry had, in fact, 

20 preoccupied the pass by some hours ; but the khan, 
having two great advantages, — namely, a strong body 
of infantry, who had been conveyed by sections of five 
on about two hundred camels, and some pieces of light 
artillery which he had not yet been forced to abandon, 

25 — soon began to make a serious impression upon this 
unsupported detachment, and they would probably at 
any rate have retired ; but at the very moment when 
they were making some dispositions in that view Zebek- 
Dorchi appeared upon their rear with a body of trained 



REVOLT OF TUE TARTARS. • 53 

riflemen who had distinguished themselves in the war 
with Turkey. These men had contrived to crawl un- 
observed over the cliffs which skirted the ravine, avail- 
ing themselves of the dry beds of the summer torrents, 
and other inequalities of the ground, to conceal their 5 
movement. Disorder and trepidation ensued instantly 
in the Cossack files. The khan, who had been waiting 
with the elite of his heavy cavalry, charged furiously 
upon them. Total overthrow followed to the Cossacks, 
and a slaughter such as in some measure avenged the 10 
recent bloody extermination of their allies, the ancient 
ouloss of Feka-Zechorr. The slight horses of the Cos- 
sacks were unable to support the weight of heavy Po- 
lish dragoons and a body of trained m meleers (that is, 
cuirassiers mounted on camels). Hardy they were, but 15 
not strong, nor a match for their antagonists in weight ; 
and their extraordinary efforts through the last few 
days to gain their present position had greatly dimin- 
ished their powers for effecting an escape. Very few, 
in fact, did escape ; and the bloody day of Ouchim be- 20 
came as memorable among the Cossacks as that which, 
about twenty days before, bad signalized the complete 
annihilation of the Feka-Zechorr. 

The road was now open to the river Igritch, and as 
yet even far beyond it to the Turgai ; but how long this 25 
state of things would continue was every day more 
doubtful. Certain intelligence was now received that a 
large Russian army, well appointed in every arm, was 
advancing upon the Turgai under the command of 



54 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

General Traubenberg. This officer was to be joined on 
his route by ten thousand Bashkirs and pretty nearly 
the same amount of Kirghises, — both hereditary ene- 
mies of the Kalmucks, both exasperated to a point of 

5 madness by the bloody trophies which Oubacha and 
Momotbacha had in late years won from such of their 
compatriots as served under the Sultan. The Czarina's 
yoke these wild nations bore with submissive patience, 
but not the hands by which it had been imposed ; and 

10 accordingly, catching with eagerness at the present 
occasion offered to their vengeance, they sent an assur- 
ance to the Czarina of their perfect obedience to her 
commands, and at the same time a message significantly 
declaring in what spirit they meant to execute them, 

15 namely, "that they would not trouble her Majesty with 
prisoners." 

Here then arose, as before with the Cossacks, a race 
for the Kalmucks with the regular armies of Russia, 
and concurrently with nations as fierce and semihuman- 

20 ized as themselves, besides that they were stung into 
threefold activity by the furies of mortified pride and 
military abasement under the eyes of the Turkish 
Sultan. The forces, and more especially the artillery, 
of Russia were far too overwhelming to permit the 

25 thought of a regular opposition in pitched battles, even 
with a less dilapidated state of their resources than they 
could reasonably expect at the period of their arrival 
on the Turgai. In their speed lay their only hope, — 
in strength of foot, as before, and not in strength of 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 55 

arm. Onward, therefore, the Kalmucks pressed, mark- 
ing the lines of their wide-extending march over the 
sad solitudes of the steppes by a never-ending chain of 
corpses. The old and the young, the sick man on his 
couch, the mother with her baby, — all were left behind. 5 
Sights such as these, with the many rueful aggravations 
incident to the helpless condition of infancy, — of dis- 
ease and of female weakness abandoned to the wolves 
amidst a howling wilderness, — continued to track their 
course through a space of full two thousand miles ; for 10 
so much at the least it was likely to prove, including 
the circuits to which they were often compelled by 
rivers or hostile tribes, from the point of starting on the 
Volga until they could reach their destined halting 
ground on the east bank of the Turgai. For the first 15 
seven weeks of this march their sufferings had been 
embittered by the excessive severity of the cold ; and 
every night — so long as wood was to be had for fires, 
either from the lading of the camels, or from the desper- 
ate sacrifice of their baggage wagons, or (as occasionally 20 
happened) from the forests which skirted the banks of 
the many rivers which crossed their path — no spectacle 
was more frequent than that of a circle, composed of 
men, women, and children, gathered by hundreds round 
a central fire, all dead and stiff at the return of morning 25 
light. Myriads were left behind from pure exhaustion, 
of whom none had a chance, under the combined evils 
which beset them, of surviving through the next twenty- 
four hours. Frost, however, and snow at length ceased 



56 REVOLT OF THE TAETABS. 

to persecute ; the vast extent of the march at length 
brought them into more genial latitudes ; and the 
unusual duration of the inarch was gradually bringing 
them into the more genial seasons of the year. Two 

5 thousand miles had at least been traversed; Febru- 
ary, March, April, were gone ; the balmy month of 
May had opened ; vernal sights and sounds came from 
every side to comfort the heart-weary travellers ; and at 
last, in the latter end of May, crossing the Turgai, they 

10 took up a position where they hoped to find liberty to 
repose themselves for many weeks in comfort as well as 
in security, and to draw such supplies from the fertile 
neighborhood as might restore their shattered forces to 
a condition for executing, with less of wreck and ruin, 

15 the large remainder of the journey. 

Yes, it was true that two thousand miles of wander- 
ing had been completed, but in a period of nearly five 
months, and with the terrific sacrifice of at least two 
hundred and fifty thousand souls, to say nothing of 

20 herds and flocks past all reckoning. These had all 
perished, — ox, cow, horse, mule, ass, sheep, or goat : 
not one survived, — only the camels. These arid and 
adust creatures, looking like the mummies of some ante- 
diluvian animals, without the affections or sensibilities 

25 of flesh and blood, — these only still erected their speak- 
ing eyes to the eastern heavens, and had to all appear- 
ance come out from this long tempest of trial unscathed 
and unharmed. The khan, knowing how much he was 
individually answerable for the misery which had been 



BE VOLT OF THE TARTARS. 57 

sustained, must have wept tears even more bitter than 
those of Xerxes when he threw his eyes over the myr- 
iads whom he had assembled; for the tears of Xerxes 
were unmingled with remorse. Whatever amends were 
in his power the khan resolved to make by sacrifices 5 
to the general good of all personal regards ; and accord- 
ingly, even at this point of their advance, he once more 
deliberately brought under review the whole question of 
the revolt. The question was formally debated before 
the council, whether, even at this point, they should 10 
untread their steps, and, throwing themselves upon 
the Czarina's mercy, return to their old allegiance. In 
that case, Oubacha professed himself willing to become 
the scapegoat for the general transgression. This, he 
argued, was no fantastic scheme, but even easy of ac- 15 
complishment ; for the unlimited and sacred power of 
the khan, so well known to the empress, made it abso- 
lutely iniquitous to attribute any separate responsibility 
to the people. Upon the khan rested the guilt ; upon 
the khan would descend the imperial vengeance. This 20 
proposal was applauded for its generosity, but was ener- 
getically opposed by Zebek-Dorchi. Were they to lose 
the whole journey of two thousand miles ? Was their 
misery to perish without fruit ? True it was that they 
had yet reached only the halfway house ; but in that re- 25 
spect the motives were evenly balanced for retreat or for 
advance. Either way they would have pretty nearly 
the same distance to traverse, but with this difference, 
— that, forwards, their route lay through lands compara- 



58 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

tively fertile ; backwards through a blasted wilderness, 
rich only in memorial of their sorrow, and hideous to 
Kalmuck eyes by the trophies of their calamity. Be- 
sides, though the empress might accept an excuse for 

5 the past, would she the less forbear to suspect for 
the future ? The Czarina's pardon they might obtain ; 
but could they ever hope to recover her confidence? 
Doubtless there would now be a standing presumption 
against them, an immortal ground of jealousy ; and a 

10 jealous government would be but another name for a 
harsh one. Finally, whatever motives there ever had 
been for the revolt surely remained unimpaired by any- 
thing that had occurred. In reality the revolt was, 
after all, no revolt, but, strictly speaking, a return to 

15 their old allegiance ; since not above one hundred and 
fifty years ago, namely, in the year 1616, their ancestors 
had revolted from the Emperor of China. They had 
now tried both governments ; and for them China was 
the land of promise, and Russia the house of bondage. 

20 Spite, however, of all that Zebek could say or do, the 
yearning of the people was strongly in behalf of the 
khan's proposal ; the pardon of their prince, they per- 
suaded themselves, would be readily conceded by the 
empress ; and there is little doubt that they would at 

25 this time have thrown themselves gladly upon the im- 
perial mercy, — when suddenly all was defeated by 
the arrival of two envoys from Traubenberg. This gen- 
eral had reached the fortress of Orsk, after a very pain- 
ful march, on the 12th of April ; thence he set forward 






REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 59 

towards Oriembourg, which he reached upon the 1st of 
June, having been joined on his route, at various times 
through the month of May, by the Kirghises and a corps 
of ten thousand Bashkirs. From Oriembourg he sent 
forward his official offers to the khan, which were harsh 5 
and peremptory, holding out no specific stipulations as 
to pardon or immunity, and exacting unconditional sub- 
mission as the preliminary price of any cessation from 
military operations. The personal character of Trauben- 
berg, which was anything but energetic, and the condi- 10 
tion of his army, disorganized in a great measure by the 
length and severity of the march, made it probable, that, 
with a little time for negotiation, a more conciliatory 
tone would have been assumed. But, unhappily for all 
parties, sinister events occurred in the meantime, such 15 
as effectually put an end to every hope of the kind. 

The two envoys sent forward b}^ Traubenberg had 
reported to this officer that a distance of only ten days' 
march lay between his own headquarters and those of 
the khan. Upon this fact transpiring, the Kirghises, 20 
by their prince Nourali, and the Bashkirs, entreated the 
Russian general to advance without delay. Once hav- 
ing placed his cannon in position, so as to command the 
Kalmuck camp, the fate of the rebel khan and his peo- 
ple would be in his own hands, and they would them- 25 
selves form his advanced guard. Traubenberg, however, 
— why has not been certainly explained, — refused to 
march, grounding his refusal upon the condition of his 
army and their absolute need of refreshment. Long and 



60 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

fierce was the altercation ; but at length, seeing no chance 
of prevailing, and dreading above all other events the 
escape of their detested enemy, the ferocious Bashkirs 
went off in a body by forced marches. In six days they 

5 reached the Turgai, crossed by swimming their horses, and 
fell upon the Kalmucks, who were dispersed for many 
a league in search of food or provender for their camels. 
The first day's action was one vast succession of inde- 
pendent skirmishes diffused over a field of thirty to forty 

10 miles in extent ; one party often breaking up into three 
or four, and again, according to the accidents of ground, 
three or four blending into one ; flight and pursuit, rescue 
and total overthrow, going on simultaneously, under all 
varieties of form, in all quarters of the plain. The Bash- 

15 kirs had found themselves obliged, by the scattered state 
of the Kalmucks, to split up into innumerable sections ; 
and thus, for some hours, it had been impossible for the 
most practised eye to collect the general tendency of the 
day's fortune. Both the khan and Zebek-Dorchi were 

20 at one moment made prisoners, and more than once in 
imminent danger of being cut down ; but at length Zebek 
succeeded in rallying a strong column of infantry, which, 
with the support of the camel corps on each flank, com- 
pelled the Bashkirs to retreat. Clouds, however, of 

25 these wild cavalry continued to arrive through the next 
two days and nights, followed or accompanied by the 
Kirghises. These being viewed as the advanced parties 
of Traubenberg's army, the Kalmuck chieftains saw no 
hope of safety but in flight ; and in this way it happened 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 61 

that a retreat which had so recently been brought to a 
pause, was resumed at the very moment when the un- 
happy fugitives were anticipating a deep repose, without 
further molestation, the whole summer through. 

It seemed as though every variety of wretchedness 5 
were predestined, to the Kalmucks, and as if their suffer- 
ings were incomplete unless they were rounded and ma- 
tured by all that the most dreadful agencies of summer's 
heat could superadd to those of frost and winter. To 
this sequel of their story I shall immediately revert, 10 
after first noticing a little romantic episode which oc- 
curred at this point between Oubacha and his unprinci- 
pled cousin Zebek-Dorchi. 

There was, at the time of the Kalmuck flight from the 
Volga, a Russian gentleman of some rank at the court of 15 
the khan, whom for political reasons it was thought ne- 
cessary to carry along with them as a captive. For some 
weeks his confinement had been very strict, and in one 
or two instances cruel. But as the increasing distance 
was continually diminishing the chances of escape, and 20 
perhaps, also, as the misery of the guards gradually with- 
drew their attention from all minor interests to their 
own personal sufferings, the vigilance of the custody 
grew more and more relaxed, until at length, upon a 
petition to the khan, Mr. Weseloff was formally restored 25 
to liberty ; and it was understood that he might use his 
liberty in whatever way he chose, even for returning to 
Russia, if that should be his wish. Accordingly, he was 
making active preparations for his journey to St. Peters- 



(32 BE VOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

burg, when it occurred to Zebek-Dorchi that not improb- 
ably, in some of the battles which were then anticipated 
with Traubenberg, it might happen to them to lose some 
prisoner of rank, in which case the Russian Weseloff 

5 would be a pledge in their hands for negotiating an ex- 
change. Upon this plea, to his own severe affliction, the 
Russian was detained until the further pleasure of the 
khan. The khan's name, indeed, was used through 
the whole affair, but, as it seemed, with so little concur- 

10 rence on his part, that when Weseloff in a private au- 
dience humbly remonstrated upon the injustice done him, 
and the cruelty of thus sporting with his feelings by 
setting him at liberty, and, as it were, tempting him into 
dreams of home and restored happiness, only for the 

15 purpose of blighting them, the good-natured prince dis- 
claimed all participation in the affair, and went so far 
in proving his sincerity as even to give him permission 
to effect his escape ; and, as a ready means of com- 
mencing it without raising suspicion, the khan mentioned 

20 to Mr. Weseloff that he had just then received a mes- 
sage from the hetman of the Bashkirs, soliciting a pri- 
vate interview on the banks of the Turgai at a spot 
pointed out. That interview was arranged for the com- 
ing night ; and Mr. Weseloff might go in the khan's 

25 suite, which on either side was not to exceed three per- 
sons. Weseloff was a prudent man, acquainted with the 
world, and he read treachery in the very outline of this 
scheme as stated by the khan, — treachery against the 
khan's person. He mused a little, and then communi- 



BE VOLT OF THE TARTARS. 63 

cated so much of his suspicions to the khan as might 
put him on his guard ; but, upon further consideration, 
he begged leave to decline the honor of accompanying 
the khan. The fact was, that three Kalmucks, who had 
strong motives for returning to their countrymen on the 5 
west bank of the Volga, guessing the intentions of 
Weseloff, had offered to join him in his escape. These 
men the khan would probably find himself obliged to 
countenance in their project ; so that it became a point 
of honor with Weseloff to conceal their intentions, and 10 
therefore to accomplish the evasion from the camp (of 
which the first step only would be hazardous) without 
risking the notice of the khan. 

The district in which they were now encamped 
abounded through many hundred miles with wild horses 15 
of a docile and beautiful breed. Each of the four 
fugitives had caught from seven to ten of these spirited 
creatures in the course of the last few days. This 
raised no suspicion; for the rest of the Kalmucks had 
been making the same sort of provision against the 20 
coming toils of their remaining route to China. These 
horses were secured by halters, and hidden about dusk 
in the thickets which lined the margin of the river. 
To these thickets, about ten at night, the four fugitives 
repaired. They took a circuitous path which drew them 25 
as little as possible within danger of challenge from 
any of the outposts or of the patrols which had been 
established on the quarters where the Bashkirs lay, and 
in three quarters of an hour they reached the rendez- 



G4 HEVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

vous. The moon had now risen, the horses were un- 
fastened, and they were in the act of mounting, when the 
deep silence of the woods was disturbed by a violent up- 
roar and the clashing of arms. Weseloif fancied that he 

5 heard the voice of the khan shouting for asistance. He 
remembered the communication made by that prince in 
the morning, and, requesting his companions to support 
him, he rode off in the direction of the sound. A very 
short distance brought him to an open glade in the 

10 wood, where he beheld four men contending with a 
party of at least nine or ten. Two of the four were 
dismounted at the very instant of WeselofPs arrival. 
One of these he recognized almost certainly as the khan, 
who was fighting hand to hand, but at great disadvan- 

15 tage, with two of the adverse horsemen. Seeing that 
no time was to be lost, Weseloff fired, and brought down 
one of the two. His companions discharged their car- 
bines at the same moment, and then all rushed simul- 
taneously into the little open area. The thundering 

20 sound of about thirty horses, all rushing at once into a 
narrow space, gave the impression that a whole troop of 
cavalry Ayas coming down upon the assailants, who 
accordingly wheeled about and fled with one impulse. 
Weseloff advanced to the dismounted cavalier, who, as 

25 he expected, proved to be the khan. The man whom 
Weseloff had shot was lying dead ; and both were 
shocked, though Weseloff at least was not surprised, on 
stooping down, and scrutinizing his features, to recog- 
nize a well-known confidential servant of Zebek-Dorchi. 




REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 65 



Nothing was said by either party. The khan rode off, 
escorted by Weseloff and his companions ; and for some 
time a dead silence prevailed. The situation of Weseloff 
was delicate and critical. To leave the khan at this 
point was probably to cancel their recent services ; for 5 
he might be again crossed on his path, and ' again 
attacked by the very party from whom he had just 
been delivered. Yet, on the other hand, to return to 
the camp was to endanger the chances of accomplishing 
the escape. The khan, also, was apparently revolving 10 
all this in his mind ; for at length he broke silence, and 
said, " I comprehend your situation, and under other 
circumstances I might feel it my duty to detain your 
companions ; but it would ill become me to do so after 
the important service you have just rendered me. Let 15 
us turn a little to the left. There, where you see the 
watchfire, is an outpost. Attend me so far. I am then 
safe. You may turn, and pursue your enterprise ; for 
the circumstances under which you will appear, as my 
escort, are sufficient to shield you from all suspicion for 20 
the present. I regret having no better means at my 
disposal for testifying my gratitude. But tell me, 
before we part, — Was it accident only which led you to 
my rescue ? Or had you acquired any knowledge of 
the plot by which I was decoyed into this snare ? " 25 
Weseloff answered very candidly that mere accident had 
brought him to the spot at which he heard the uproar ; 
but that having heard it, and connecting it with the 
khan's communication of the morning, he had then 



66 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

designedly gone after the sound in a way which he cer- 
tainly should not have done at so critical a moment, 
unless in the expectation of finding the khan assaulted 
by assassins. A few minutes after, they reached the 

5 outpost at which it became safe to leave the Tartar 
chieftain ; and immediately the four fugitives com- 
menced a flight which is perhaps without a parallel in 
the annals of travelling. Each of them led six or 
seven horses besides the one he rode ; and by shifting 

10 from one to the other, like the ancient desultors of the 
Roman circus, so as never to burden the same horse for 
more than half an hour at a time, they continued to 
advance at the rate of two hundred miles in the twenty- 
four hours for three days consecutively. After that 

15 time, conceiving themselves beyond pursuit, they pro- 
ceeded less rapidly, though still with a velocity which 
staggered the belief of WeselofFs friends in after years. 
He was, however, a man of high principle, and always 
adhered firmly to the details of his printed report. 

20 One of the circumstances there stated is, that they con- 
tinued to pursue the route by which the Kalmucks had 
fled, never for an instant finding any difficulty in tra- 
cing it by the skeletons and other memorials of their 
calamities. In particular, he mentions vast heaps of 

25 money as part of the valuable property which it had 
been necessary to sacrifice. These heaps were found 
lying still untouched in the deserts. From these, 
Weseloff and his companions took as much as they 
could conveniently carry ; and this it was, with the 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 67 

price of their beautiful horses (which they afterwards 
sold at one of the Russian military settlements for 
about fifteen pounds apiece), which eventually enabled 
them to pursue their journey in Russia. This journey, 
as regarded Weseloff in particular, was closed by a 5 
tragical catastrophe. He was at that time young, and 
the only child of a doting mother. Her affliction under 
the violent abduction of her son had been excessive, and 
probably had undermined her constitution. Still she 
had supported it. Weseloff, giving way to the natural 10 
impulses of his filial affection, had imprudently posted 
through Russia to his mother's house without warning 
of his approach. He rushed precipitately into her 
presence ; and she, who had stood the shocks of sorrow, 
was found unequal to the shock of joy too sudden and 15 
too acute. She died upon the spot. 

I now revert to the final scenes of the Kalmuck flight. 
These it would be useless to pursue circumstantially 
through the whole two thousand miles of suffering 
which remained ; for the character of that suffering was 20 
even more monotonous than on the former half of the 
flight, and also more severe. Its main elements were 
excessive heat, with the accompaniments of famine and 
thirst, but aggravated at every step by the murderous 
attacks of their cruel enemies, the Bashkirs and the 25 
Kirghises. . 

These people, "more fell than anguish, hunger, or 
the sea," stuck to the unhappy Kalmucks like a swarm 
of enraged hornets. And very often, whilst tlierj were 



68 BE VOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

attacking them in the rear, their advanced parties and 
flanks were attacked with almost equal fury by the peo- 
ple of the country which they were traversing ; and with 
good reason, since the law of self-preservation had now 

5 obliged the fugitive Tartars to plunder provisions and to 
forage wherever they passed. In this respect their con- 
dition was a constant oscillation of wretchedness ; for 
sometimes, pressed by grinding famine, they took a cir- 
cuit of perhaps a hundred miles in order to strike into 

10 a land rich in the comforts of life. But in such a land 
they were sure to find a crowded population, of which 
every arm was raised in unrelenting hostility, with all 
the advantages of local knowledge, and with constant 
preoccupation of all the defensible positions, mountain 

15 passes, or bridges. Sometimes, again, wearied out with 
this mode of suffering, they took a circuit of perhaps a 
hundred miles in order to strike into a land with few 
or no inhabitants ; but in such a land they were sure 
to meet absolute starvation. Then, again, whether with 

20 or without this plague of starvation, whether with or 
without this plague of hostility in front, whatever might 
be the " fierce varieties " of their misery in this respect, 
no rest ever came to their unhappy rear ; post equitem 
sedet atra cura; it was a torment like the undying worm 

25 of conscience, and upon the whole it presented a spec- 
tacle altogether unprecedented in the history of mankind. 
Private and personal malignity is not unfrequently im- 
mortal ; but rare indeed is it to find the same pertinacity 
of malice in a nation. And what imbittered the interest 




REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 69 

was, that the malice was reciprocal. Thus far the parties 
met upon equal terms ; but that equality only sharpened 
the sense of their dire inequality as to other circum- 
stances. The Bashkirs were ready to fight "from morn 
to dewy eve." The Kalmucks, on the contrary, were 5 
always obliged to. run. Was it from their enemies as 
creatures whom they feared ? No, but towards their 
friends, — towards that final haven of China, — as what 
was hourly implored by the prayers of their wives and 
the tears of their children. But, though they fled un- 10 
willingly, too often they fled in vain, being unwillingly 
recalled. There lay the torment. Every day the Bash- 
kirs fell upon them ; every day the same unprofitable 
battle was renewed. As a matter of course, the Kal- 
mucks recalled part of their advanced guard to fight 15 
them. Every day the battle raged for hours, and uni- 
formly with the same result ; for, no sooner did the 
Bashkirs find themselves too heavily pressed, and that 
the Kalmuck march had been retarded by some hours, 
than they retired into the boundless deserts, where all 20 
pursuit was hopeless. But if the Kalmucks resolved to 
press forward, regardless of their enemies, in that case 
their attacks became so fierce and overwhelming that 
the general safety seemed likely to be brought into ques- 
tion ; nor could any effectual remedy be applied to the 25 
case, even for each separate day, except by a most 
embarrassing halt and by countermarches that to men 
in their circumstances were almost worse than death. 
It will not be surprising that the irritation of such a 



70 BE VOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

systematic persecution, superadded to a previous and 
hereditary hatred, and accompanied by the stinging con- 
sciousness of utter impotence as regarded all effectual 
vengeance, should gradually have inflamed the Kalmuck 

5 animosity into the wildest expression of downright mad- 
ness and frenzy. Indeed, long before the frontiers of 
China were approached, the hostility of both sides had 
assumed the appearance much more of a warfare among 
wild beasts than among creatures acknowledging the 

10 restraints of reason or the claims of a common nature. 
The spectacle became too atrocious : it was that of a 
host of lunatics pursued by a host of fiends. 

On a fine morning in early autumn of the year 1771, 
Kien Long, the Emperor of China, was pursuing his 

15 amusements in a wild frontier district lying on the out- 
side of the Great Wall. For many hundred square 
leagues the country was desolate of inhabitants, but 
rich in woods of ancient growth, and overrun with game 
of every description. In a central spot of this solitary 

20 region the emperor had built a gorgeous hunting lodge, 
to which he resorted annually for recreation, and relief 
from the cares of government. Led onwards in pursuit 
of game, he had rambled to a distance of two hundred 
miles or more from this lodge, followed at a little dis- 

25 tance by a sufficient military escort, and every night 
pitching his tent in a different situation, until at length 
he had arrived on the very margin of the vast central 
deserts of Asia. Here he was standing, by accident, at 




REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 71 

an opening of his pavilion, enjoying the morning sun- 
shine, when suddenly to the westward there arose a vast, 
cloudy vapor, which by degrees expanded, mounted, and 
•seemed to be slowly diffusing itself over the whole face 
of the heavens. By and by this vast sheet of mist began 5 
to thicken towards the horizon, and to roll forward in 
billowy volumes. The emperor's suite assembled from 
all quarters ; the silver trumpets were sounded in the 
rear ; and from all the glades and forest avenues began 
to trot forward towards the pavilion the yagers — half 10 
cavalry, half huntsmen — who composed the imperial 
escort. Conjecture was on the stretch to divine the 
cause of this phenomenon ; and the interest continually 
increased in proportion as simple curiosity gradually 
deepened into the anxiety of uncertain danger. At first 15 
it had been imagined that some vast troops of deer or 
other wild animals of the chase had been disturbed 
in their forest haunts by the emperor's movements, or 
possibly by wild beasts prowling for prey, and might be 
fetching a compass by way of re-entering the forest 20 
grounds at some remoter points secure from molestation. 
But this conjecture was dissipated by the slow increase 
of the cloud and the steadiness of its motion. In the 
course of two hours the vast phenomenon had advanced 
to a point which was judged to be within five miles 25 
of the spectators ; though all calculations of distance 
were difficult, and often fallacious, when applied to the 
endless expanses of the Tartar deserts. Through the 
next hour, during which the gentle morning breeze had 






72 BE VOLT OF THE TARTARS. 



a little freshened, the dusty vapor had developed itself 
far and wide into the appearance of huge aerial draperies, 
hanging in mighty volumes from the sky to the earth ; 
and at particular points, where the eddies of the breeze 

5 acted upon the pendulous skirts of these aerial curtains, 
rents were perceived, sometimes taking the form of 
regular arches, portals, and windows, through which 
began dimly to gleam the heads of camels " indorsed " 
with human beings, and at intervals the moving of men 

10 and horses in tumultuous array, and then through other 
openings, or vistas, at far-distant points, the flashing of 
polished arms. But sometimes, as the wind slackened 
or died away, all those openings, of whatever form, in 
the cloudy pall, would slowly close, and for a time the 

15 whole pageant was shut up from view ; although the 
growing din, the clamors, the shrieks and groans ascend- 
ing from infuriated myriads, reported, in a language not 
to be misunderstood, what was going on behind the 
cloudy screen. 

20 It was, in fact, the Kalmuck host, now in the last 
extremities of their exhaustion, and very fast approach- 
ing to that final stage of privation and intense misery 
beyond which few or none could have lived, but also, 
happily for themselves, fast approaching (in a literal 

25 sense) that final stage of their long pilgrimage at which 
they would meet hospitality on a scale of royal magnifi- 
cence, and full protection from their enemies. These 
enemies, however, as yet, still were hanging on their 
rear as fiercely as ever, though this day was destined to 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 73 

be the last of their hideous persecution. The khan had, 
in fact, sent forward couriers with all the requisite state- 
ments and petitions, addressed to the emperor of China. 
These had been duly received, and preparations made 
in consequence to welcome the Kalmucks with the most 5 
paternal benevolence. But as these couriers had been 
despatched from the Turgai at the moment of arrival 
thither, and before the advance of Traubenberg had 
made it necessary for the khan to order a hasty renewal 
of the flight, the emperor had not looked for their arrival 10 
on their frontier until full three months after the pres- 
ent time. The khan had, indeed, expressly notified his 
intention to pass the summer heats on the banks of the 
Turgai, and to recommence his retreat about the begin- 
ning of September. The subsequent change of plan, 15 
being unknown to Kien Long, left him for some time in 
doubt as to the true interpretation to be put upon this 
mighty apparition in the desert ; but at length the sav- 
age clamors of hostile fury and the clangor of weapons 
unveiled to the emperor the true nature of those unex- 20 
pected calamities which had so prematurely precipitated 
the Kalmuck measures. 

Apprehending the real state of affairs, the emperor 
instantly perceived that the first act of his fatherly care 
for these erring children (as he esteemed them), now re- 25 
turning to their ancient obedience, must be to deliver 
them from their pursuers. And this was less difficult 
than might have been supposed. Not many miles in 
the rear was a body of well-appointed cavalry, with a 



74 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

strong detachment of artillery, who always attended 
the emperor's motions. These were hastily summoned. 
Meantime it occurred to the train of courtiers that some 
danger might arise to the emperor's person from the 

5 proximity of a lawless enemy ; and accordingly he was 
induced to retire a little to the rear. It soon appeared, 
however, to those who watched the vapory shroud in 
the desert, that its motion was not such as would argue 
the direction of the march to be exactly upon the pa- 

10 vilion, but rather in a diagonal line, making an angle of 
full forty-five degrees with that line in which the impe- 
rial cortege had been standing, and therefore with a 
distance continually increasing. Those who knew the 
country judged that the Kalmucks were making for a 

15 large fresh-water lake about seven or eight miles distant. 
They were right ; and to that point the imperial cavalry 
was ordered up; and it was precisely in that spot, and 
about three hours after, and at noonday, on the 8th of 
September, that the great exodus of the Kalmuck Tar- 

20 tars was brought to a final close, and with a scene of 
such memorable and hellish fury as formed an appropri- 
ate winding up to an expedition in all its parts and 
details so awfully disastrous. The emperor was not per- 
sonally present, or at least he saw whatever he did see 

25 from too great a distance to discriminate its individual 
features ; but he records in his written memorial the 
report made to him of this scene by some of his own 
officers. 

The Lake of Tengis, near the frightful Desert of Kobi, 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 75 

lay in a hollow amongst hills of a moderate height, 
ranging generally from two to three thousand feet high. 
About eleven o'clock in the forenoon the Chinese cavalry 
reached the summit of a road which led through a 
cradle-like dip in the mountains right down upon the 5 
margin of the lake. From this pass, elevated about 
two thousand feet above the level of the water, they con- 
tinued to descend, by a very winding and difficult road, 
for an hour and a half; and during the whole of this 
descent they were compelled to be inactive spectators of 10 
the fiendish spectacle below. The Kalmucks, reduced 
by this time from about six hundred thousand souls 
to two hundred thousand, and after enduring for two 
months and a half the miseries I have previously de- 
scribed, — outrageous heat, famine, and the destroying 15 
scimitar of the Kirghises and the Bashkirs, — had for 
the last ten days been traversing a hideous desert, where 
no vestiges were seen of vegetation, and no drop of water 
could be found. Camels and men were already so over- 
laden that it was a mere impossibility that they should 20 
carry a tolerable sufficiency for the pjassage of this fright- 
ful wilderness. On the eighth day the wretched daily 
allowance, which had been continually diminishing, failed 
entirely; and thus, for two days of insupportable fatigue, 
the horrors of thirst had been carried to the fiercest 25 
extremity. Upon this last morning, at the sight of the 
hills and the forest scenery, which announced to those 
who acted as guides the neighborhood of the Lake of 
Tengis, all the people rushed along with maddening 



76 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

eagerness to the anticipated solace. The day grew hotter 
and hotter, the people more and more exhausted ; and 
gradually, in the general rush forwards to the lake, all 
discipline and command were lost, all attempts to pre- 

5 serve a rear-guard were neglected. The wild Bashkirs 
rode in amongst the encumbered people, and slaugh- 
tered them by wholesale and almost without resistance. 
Screams and tumultuous shouts proclaimed the progress 
of the massacre ; but none heeded, none halted : all alike. 

10 pauper or noble, continued to rush on with maniacal 
haste to the waters, — all with faces blackened by the 
heat preying upon the liver, and with tongue drooping 
from the mouth. The cruel Bashkir was affected by the 
same misery, and manifested the same symptoms of his 

15 misery, as the wretched Kalmuck. The murderer was 
oftentimes in the same frantic misery as his murdered 
victim. Many, indeed (an ordinary effect of thirst), in 
both nations, had become lunatic ; and in this state, 
while mere multitude and condensation of bodies alone 

20 opposed any check to the destroying scimitar and the 
trampling hoof, the lake was reached ; and into that the 
whole vast body of enemies rushed, and together con- 
tinued to rush, forgetful of all things at that moment 
but of one almighty instinct. This absorption of the 

25 thoughts in one maddening appetite lasted for a single 
minute ; but in the -next arose the final scene of parting- 
vengeance. Far and wide the waters of the solitary 
lake were instantly dyed red with blood and gore. Here 
rode a party of savage Bashkirs, hewing off heads as fast 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 77 

as the swaths fall before the mower's scythe ; there stood 
unarmed Kalmucks in a death grapple with their de- 
tested foes, both up to the middle in water, and often- 
times both sinking together below the surface, from 
weakness or from struggles, and perishing in each other's 5 
arms. Did the Bashkirs at any point collect into a clus- 
ter for the sake of giving impetus to the assault, thither 
were the camels driven in fiercely by those who rode 
them, generally women or boys ; and even these quiet 
creatures were forced into a share in this carnival of 10 
murder by trampling down as many as they could strike 
prostrate with the lash of their fore-legs. Every mo- 
ment the water grew more polluted ; and yet every 
moment fresh myriads came up to the lake, and rushed 
in, not able to resist their frantic thirst, and swallowing 15 
large draughts of water visibly contaminated with the 
blood of their slaughtered compatriots. Wheresoever 
the lake was shallow enough to allow of men raising 
their heads above the water, there, for scores of acres, 
were to be seen all forms of ghastly fear, of agonizing 20 
struggle, of spasm, of convulsion, of mortal conflict, — 
death, and the fear of death ; revenge, and the lunacy 
of revenge ; hatred, and the frenzy of hatred ; until the 
neutral spectators, of whom there were not a few, now 
descending the. eastern side of the lake, at length averted 25 
their eyes in horror. This horror, which seemed incapa- 
ble of further addition, was, however, increased by an 
unexpected incident. The Bashkirs, beginning to per- 
ceive here and there the approach of the Chinese cavalry, 



78 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

felt it prudent, wheresoever they were sufficiently at 
leisure from the passions of the murderous scene, to 
gather into bodies. This was noticed by the governor 
of a small Chinese fort built upon an eminence above 

5 the lake ; and immediately he threw in a broadside ; 
which spread havoc amongst the Bashkir tribe. As often 
as the Bashkirs collected into " globes " and " turms " as 
their only means of meeting the long line of descending 
Chinese cavalry, so often did the Chinese governor of 

10 the fort pour in his exterminating broadside ; until at 
length the lake, at the lower end, became one vast seeth- 
ing caldron of human bloodshed and carnage. The 
Chinese cavalry had reached the foot of the hills ; the 
Bashkirs, attentive to their movements, had formed ; 

15 skirmishes had been fought ; and with a quick sense 
that the contest was henceforward rapidly becoming 
hopeless, the Bashkirs and Kirghises began to retire. 
The pursuit was not as vigorous as the Kalmuck hatred 
would have desired ; but at the same time the very 

20 gloomiest hatred could not but find in their own dread- 
ful experience of the Asiatic deserts, and in the cer- 
tainty that these wretched Bashkirs had to repeat that 
same experience a second time, for thousands of miles, 
as the price exacted by a retributory Providence for 

25 their vindictive cruelty, — not the very gloomiest of the 
Kalmucks, or the least reflecting, but found in all this 
a retaliatory chastisement more complete and absolute 
than any which their swords and lances could have ob- 
tained, or human vengeance could have devised. 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 79 

Here ends the tale of the Kalmuck wanderings in the 
desert ; for any subsequent marches which awaited them 
were neither long nor painful. Every possible allevia- 
tion and refreshment for their exhausted bodies had 
been already provided by Kien Long with the most 5 
princely munificence ; and lands of great fertility were 
immediately assigned to them in ample extent along the 
river Ily, not very far from the point at which they had 
first emerged from the wilderness of Kobi. But the 
beneficent attention of the Chinese emperor may be best 10 
stated in his own words, as translated into French by 
one of the Jesuit missionaries : " La nation des Tor- 
gotes (savoir les Kalmuques) arriva a Ily, toute delabree, 
n'ayant ni de quoi vivre, ni de quoi se vetir. Je l'avais 
prevu ; et j'avais ordonne de faire en tout genre les pro- 15 
visions necessaires pour pouvoir les secourir prompte- 
ment ; c'est ce qui a ete execute. On a fait la division 
des terres ; et on a assigne a chaque famille une portion 
sumsante pour pouvoir servir a son entretien, soit en la 
cultivant, soit en y nourissant des bestiaux. On a donne" 20 
a chaque particulier des etoffes pour l'habiller, des grains 
pour se nourrir pendant Pespace d'une annee, des usten- 
siles pour le menage et d'autres choses necessaires : et 
outre cela plusieurs onces d'argent, pour se pourvoir de 
ce qu'on aurait pu oublier. On a designe des lieux parti- 25 
culiers,fertiles en paturages ; et on leur a donne des boeufs, 
moutons, etc., pour qu'ils pussent dans la suite travailler 
par eux-memes a leur entretien et a leur bienetre." 

These are the words of the emperor himself, speaking 



80 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

in his own person of his own paternal cares ; but another 
Chinese, treating the same subject, records the munifi- 
cence of this prince in terms which proclaim still more 
forcibly the disinterested generosity which prompted, 

5 and the delicate considerateness which conducted, this 
extensive bounty. He has been speaking of the Kal- 
mucks, and he goes on thus : " Lorsqu'ils arriverent sur 
nos frontieres (au nombre de plusieurs centaines de mille, 
quoique la fatigue extreme, la faim, la soif, et toutes les 

10 autres incommodites inseparables d'une tres-longue et 
tres penible route en eussent fait perir presque autant), 
ils etaient reduits a la derniere misere ; ils manquaient 
de tout. II [Pempereur, Kien Long] leur fit preparer 
des logemens conformes a leur maniere de vivre ; il leur 

15 fit distribuer des aliments et des habits ; il leur fit donner 
des bceufs, des moutons, et des ustensiles, pour les mettre 
en etat de former des troupeaux et de cultiver la terre, 
et tout cela a ses propres frais, qui se sont montes a des 
sommes immenses, sans compter Pargent qu'ila donne a, 

20 chaque chef-de-famille, pour pourvoir a la subsi stance de 
sa femme et de ses enfans." 

Thus, after their memorable year of misery, the Kal- 
mucks were replaced in territorial possessions, and in 
comfort equal perhaps, or even superior/to that which 

25 they had enjoyed in Russia, and with superior political 
advantages. But, if equal or superior, their condition 
was no longer the same : if not in degree, their social 
prosperity had altered in quality ; for, instead of being 
a purely pastoral and vagrant people, they were now in 



REVOLT OF TEE TARTARS. 81 

circumstances which obliged them to become essentially 
dependent upon agriculture, and thus far raised in social 
rank, that, by the natural course of their habits and the 
necessities of life, they were effectually reclaimed from 
roving and from the savage customs connected with a 5 
half-nomadic life. They gained also in political privi- 
leges, chiefly through the immunity from military ser- 
vice which their new relations enabled them to obtain. 
These were circumstances of advantage and gain. But 
one great disadvantage there was, amply to overbalance 10 
all other possible gain, — the chances were lost, or were 
removed to an incalculable distance, for their conversion 
to Christianity, without which in these times there is no 
absolute advance possible on the path of true civilization. 

One word remains to be said upon the personal 15 
interests concerned in this great drama. The catas- 
trophe in this respect was remarkable and complete. 
Oubacha, with all his goodness, and incapacity of sus- 
pecting, had, since the mysterious affair on the banks of 
the Turgai, felt his mind alienated from his cousin. He 20 
revolted from the man that would have murdered him ; 
and he had displayed his caution so visibly as to provoke 
a reaction in the bearing of Zebek-Dorchi, and a dis- 
pleasure which all his dissimulation could not hide. 
This had produced a feud, which, by keeping them 25 
aloof, had probably saved the life of Oubacha ; for the 
friendship of Zebek-Dorchi was more fatal than his open 
enmity. After the settlement on the Ily, this feud con- 
tinued to advance, until it came under the notice of the 



82 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

emperor on occasion of a visit which all the Tartar 
chieftains made to his Majesty at his hunting lodge in 
1772. The emperor informed himself accurately of all 
the particulars connected with the transaction, of all the 

5 rights and claims put forward, and of the way in which 
they would severally affect the interests of the Kalmuck 
people. The consequence was, that he adopted the 
cause of Oubacha, and repressed the pretensions of 
Zebek-Dorchi, who, on his part, so deeply resented this 

10 discountenance to his ambitious projects, that, in con- 
junction with other chiefs, he had the presumption even 
to weave nets of treason against the emperor himself. 
Plots were laid, were detected, were baffled : counter- 
plots were constructed upon the same basis and with the 

15 benefit of the opportunities thus offered. 

Finally Zebek-Dorchi was invited to the imperial lodge, 
together with all his accomplices ; and, under the skilful 
management of the Chinese nobles in the emperor's es- 
tablishment, the murderous artifices of these Tartar chief - 

20 tains were made to recoil upon themselves ; and the whole 
of them perished by assassination at a great imperial ban- 
quet ; for the Chinese morality is exactly of that kind 
which approves in everything the lex talionis : — 

" Lex nee justior ulla est [as they think] 
25 Quam necis artifices arte perire sua." 

So perished Zebek-Dorchi, the author and originator 
of the great Tartar exodus. Oubacha, meantime, and 



REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 83 

his people were gradually recovering from the effects of 
their misery, and repairing their losses. Peace and 
prosperity, under the gentle rule of a fatherly lord para- 
mount, redawned upon the tribes ; their household lares, 
after so harsh a translation to distant climates, found 5 
again a happy reinstatement in what had, in fact, been 
their primitive abodes ; they found themselves settled in 
quiet sylvan scenes, rich in all the luxuries of life, and 
endowed with the perfect loveliness of Arcadian beauty. 
But from the hills of this favored land, and even from 10 
the level grounds, as they approach its western border, 
they still look out upon that fearful wilderness which 
once beheld a nation in agony, — the utter extirpation 
of nearly half a million from among its numbers, and for 
the remainder a storm of misery so fierce that in the 15 
end (as happened also at Athens, during the Peloponne- 
sian War, from a different form of misery) very many 
lost their memory ; all records of their past life were 
wiped out as with a sponge, utterly erased and cancelled ; 
and many others lost their reason, some in a gentle form 20 
of pensive melancholy, some in a more restless form of 
feverish delirium and nervous agitation, and others in 
the fixed forms of tempestuous mania, raving frenzy, or 
moping idiocy. Two great commemorative monuments 
arose in after years to mark the depth and permanence 25 
of the awe, the sacred and reverential grief, with which 
all persons looked back upon the dread calamities at- 
tached to the year of the tiger, — all who had either per- 
sonally shared in those calamities and had themselves 



84 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

drunk from that cup of sorrow, or who had effectually 
been made witnesses to their results, and associated with 
their relief : two great monuments, we say : first of all, 
one in the religious solemnity, enjoined by the dalai 

5 lama, called in the Tartar language a Romanang ; that 
is, a national commemoration, with music the most rich 
and solemn, of all the souls who departed to the rest of 
paradise from the afflictions of the desert. This took 
place about six years after the arrival in China. Sec- 

10 ondly, another, more durable, and more commensurate 
to the scale of the calamity and to the grandeur of this 
national exodus, in the mighty columns of granite and 
brass erected by the Emperor, Kien Long, near the 
banks of the Ily. These columns stand upon the very 

15 margin of the steppes, and they bear a short but em- 
phatic inscription to the following effect : — 

By the will of God, 
Here, upon the brink of these deserts, 
Which from this point begin and stretch away, 
20 Pathless, treeless, waterless, 

For thousands of miles, and along the margins of many mighty nations, 

Rested from their labors and from great afflictions, 

Under the shadow of the Chinese Wall, 

And by the favor of Kien Long, God's Lieutenant upon Earth, 

25 The ancient Children of the Wilderness, — the Torgote Tartars, — 

Flying before the wrath of the Grecian czar ; 

Wandering sheep who had strayed away from the Celestial Empire in 

the year 1616, 
But are now mercifully gathered again, after infinite sorrow, 
30 Into the fold of their forgiving shepherd. 

Hallowed be the spot forever, 
And hallowed be the day — September 8, 1771! 

Amen. 



APPENDED EDITORIAL NOTE. 



The Chinese Accounts of the Migration. 

As has been mentioned, these appeared, in translated form, in 
1776, in Vol. I. of the great collection of Memoires concernant les 
Chinois, published at Paris by the enterprise of the French Jesuit 
missionaries at Pekin. The most important of them, under the 
title Monument de la Transmigration des Tourgouths des Bords 
de la Mer Caspienne dans V Empire de la Chine, occupies twenty- 
seven pages of the volume, and purports to be a translation of a 
Chinese document drawn up by the Emperor Kien Long himself. 
This Emperor, described by the missionaries as " the best-lettered 
man in his Empire," had special reasons for so commemorating 
as one of the most interesting events of his reign the sudden self- 
transference in 1771 of so large a Tartar horde from the Russian 
allegiance to his own. Much of the previous part of his reign had 
been spent in that work of conquering and consolidating the Tar- 
tar appendages of his Empire which had been begun by his cele- 
brated grandfather the Emperor Kang-hi, (1661-1721) ; and it so 
chanced that the particular Tartar horde which now, in 1771, had 
inarched all the way from the shores of the Caspian to appeal to 
him for protection and for annexation to the Chinese Empire were 
but the posterity of a horde who had formerly belonged to that 
Empire, but had detached themselves from it in the reign of 
Kang-hi, by a contrary march westward to annex themselves to 
the Russian dominions. The event of 1771, therefore, was gratify- 
ing to Kien Long as completing his independent exertions among 
the Tartars on the fringes of China by the voluntary re-settle- 

85 



86 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

ment within those fringes, and return to the Chinese allegiance, 
of a whole Tartar population which had been astray, and under 
distant and alien rule, for several generations. With this expla- 
nation, the following sentences from Kien Long's Memoir, con- 
taining all its historical substance, will be fully intelligible : — 

"All those who at present compose the nation of the Tor- 
gouths, unaffrighted by the dangers of a long and painful march, 
and full of the single desire of procuring themselves for the future 
a better mode of life, and a more happy lot, have abandoned the 
parts which they inhabited far beyond our frontiers, have trav- 
ersed with a courage proof against all difficulties a space of more 
than ten thousand lys, and are come to range themselves in the 
number of my subjects. Their submission, in my view of it, is 
not a submission to which they have been inspired by fear, but is 
a voluntary and free submission, if ever there was one. . . . Tbc 
Torgouths are one of the branches of the Eleuths. Four differ- 
ent branches of people formed at one time the whole nation of 
the Tchong-kar. It would be difficult to explain their common 
origin, respecting which indeed there is no very certain knowl- 
edge. These four branches separated from each other, so that 
each became a nation apart. That of the Eleuths, the chief of 
them all, gradually subdued the others, and continued till the 
time of Kang-hi to exercise this usurped pre-eminence over them. 
Tse-ouang-raptan then reigned over the Eleuths, and Ayouki over 
the Torgouths. These two chiefs, being on bad terms with each 
other, had their mutual contests ; of which Ayouki, who was the 
weaker, feared that in the end he would be the unhappy victim. 
He formed the project of "withdrawing himself forever from the 
domination of the Eleuths. He took secret measures for securing 
the flight which he meditated, and sought safety, with all his peo- 
ple, in the territories which are under the dominion of the Rus- 
sians. These permitted them to establish themselves in the 
country of Etchil [the country between the Volga and the Jaik, a 
little to the north of the Caspian Sea]. . . . Oubache, the present 
Khan of the Torgouths, is the youngest grandson of Ayouki. 



APPENDED EDITORIAL NOTE. 87 

The Russians never ceasing to require him to furnish soldiers for 
incorporation into their armies, and having at last carried off his 
own son to serve them as a hostage, and being besides of a reli- 
gion different from his, and paying no respect to that of the Lamas, 
which the Torgouths profess, Oubache and his people at last de- 
termined to shake off a yoke which was becoming daily more and 
more insupportable. After having secretly deliberated among 
themselves, they concluded that they must abandon a residence 
where they had so much to suffer, in order to come and live more 
at ease in those parts of the dominion of China where the reli- 
gion professed is that of Fo. At the commencement of the 
eleventh month of last year [December, 1770] they took the road, 
with their wives, their children, and all their baggage, traversed 
the country of the Hasaks [Cossacks], skirted Lake Palkachenor 
and the adjacent deserts ; and, about the end of the sixth month 
of this year [in August, 1771], after having passed over more 
than ten thousand lys during the space of the eight whole months 
of their journey, they arrived at last on the frontiers of Charapen, 
not far from the borders of Ily. I knew already that the Tor- 
gouths were on the march to come and make submission to me. 
The news was brought me not long after their departure from 
Etchil. I then reflected that, as Ileton, general of the troops 
that are at Ily, was already charged with other very important 
affairs, it was to be feared that he would not be able to regulate 
with all the requisite attention those which concerned these new 
refugees. Chouhede, one of the councillors of the general, was 
at Ouche, charged with keeping order among the Mahometans 
there. As he found it within his power to give his attention to 
the Torgouths, I ordered him to repair to Ily and do his best for 
their solid settlement. ... At the same time, I did not neglect 
any of the precautions that seemed to me necessary. I ordered 
Chouhede to raise small forts and redoubts at the most important 
points, and to cause all the passes to be carefully guarded ; and I 
enjoined on him the duty of himself getting ready the necessary 
provisions of every kind inside those defences. . . . The Tor- 



88 BEVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

gouths arrived, and on arriving found lodgings ready, means of 
sustenance, and all the conveniences they could have found in 
their own proper dwellings. This is not all. Those principal men 
among them who had to come personally to do me homage had 
their expenses paid, and were honorably conducted, by the impe- 
rial post-road, to the place where I then was. I saw them. I 
spoke to them ; I invited them to partake with me in the pleas- 
ures of the chase; and, at the end of the number of days ap- 
pointed for this exercise, they attended me in my retinue as far 
as to Ge-hol. There I gave them a ceremonial banquet and made 
them the customary presents. ... It was at this Ge-hol, in 
those charming parts where Kang-hi, my grandfather, made him- 
self an abode to which he could retire during the hot season, at 
the same time that he thus put himself in a situation to be able 
to watch with greater care over the welfare of the peoples that 
are beyond the western frontiers of the Empire; it was, I say, in 
those lovely parts that, after having conquered the whole country 
of the Eleuths, I had received the sincere homages of Tchering 
and his Tourbeths, who alone among the Eleuths had remained 
faithful to me. One has not to go many years back to touch the 
epoch of that transaction. The remembrance of it is yet recent. 
And now r — wdio could have predicted it ? — when there was the 
least possible room for expecting such a thing, and when I had 
no thought of it, that one of the branches of the Eleuths which 
first separated itself from the trunk, those Torgouths who had 
voluntarily expatriated themselves to go and live under a foreign 
and distant dominion, these same Torgouths are come of them- 
selves to submit to me of their own good-will ; and it happens 
that it is still at Ge-hol, not far from the venerable spot where 
my grandfather's ashes repose, that I have the opportunity, which 
I never sought, of admitting them solemnly into the number of 
my subjects." 

Annexed to this general memoir there were some notes, also 
by the Emperor, one of them being that description of the suffer- 
ings of the Torgouths on their march, and of the miserable con- 



APPENDED EDITORIAL NOTE. 89 

dition in which they arrived at the Chinese frontier, which De 
Quincey has quoted at p. 79. Annexed to the memoir, there is 
also a letter from P. Amiot, one of the French Jesuit missionaries, 
dated " Pe-king, 15th October, 1773," containing a comment on 
the memoir by a certain Chinese scholar and mandarin, Yu-min- 
tchoung, who had been charged by the Emperor with the task of 
seeing the narrative properly preserved in four languages in a 
monumental form. It is from this Chinese comment on the Im- 
perial Memoir that there is the extract at p. 80 as to the miser- 
able condition of the fugitives. 

On a comparison of De Quincey's splendid paper with the Chi- 
nese documents, several discrepancies present themselves; the 
most important of which perhaps are these : — (1) In De Quin- 
cey's paper it is Kien Long himself who first descries the 
approach of the vast Kalmuck horde to the frontiers of his domin- 
ions. On a fine morning in the early autumn of 1771, we are 
told, being then on a hunting expedition in the solitary Tartar 
wilds on the outside of the great Chinese Wall, and standing by 
chance at an opening of his pavilion to enjoy the morning sun- 
shine, he sees the huge sheet of mist on the horizon, which as it 
rolls nearer and nearer, and its features become more definite, re- 
veals camels, and horses, and human beings in myriads, and an- 
nounces the advent of etc., etc. ! In Kien Long's own narrative 
he is not there at all, having expected indeed the arrival of the 
Kalmuck host, but having deputed the military and commissariat 
arrangements for the reception of them to his trusted officer 
Chouhede ; and his first sight of any of them is when their chiefs 
are brought to him, by the imperial post-road, to his quarters a 
good way off, where they are honorably entertained, and whence 
they accompany him to his summer residence of Ge-hol. (2) De 
Quincey's closing account of the monument in memory of the 
Tartar Transmigration which Kien Long caused to be erected, 
an! his copy of the fine inscription on the monument, are not in 
accord with the Chinese statements respecting that matter. 
" Mighty columns of granite and brass erected by the Emperor 



90 BEVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

Kien Long near the banks of the Ily," is De Quincey's description 
of the monument. The account given of the affair by the man- 
darin Yu-min-tchoung, in his comment on the Emperor's Memoir, 
is very different. " The year of the arrival of the Torgouths," 
he says, " chanced to be precisely that in which the Emperor was 
celebrating the eightieth year of the age of his mother the Em- 
press-Dowager. In memory of this happy day his Majesty had 
built on the mountain which shelters from the heat (Pi-chou- 
chan) a vast and magnificent miao, in honor of the reunion of all 
the followers of Foin one and the same worship; it had just been 
completed when Oubache and the other princes of his nation ar- 
rived at Ge-hol. In memory of an event which has contributed 
to make this same year forever famous in our annals, it has been 
his Majesty's will to erect in the same miao a monument which 
should fix the epoch of the event and attest its authenticity; he 
himself composed the words for the monument and wrote the 
characters with his own hand. How small the number of per- 
sons that will have an opportunity of seeing and reading this 
monument within the w r alls of the temple in which it is erected ! " 
Moreover the words of the monumental inscription in De Quin- 
cey's copy of it are hardly what Kien Long would have written or 
could have authorized. " Wandering sheep who have strayed away 
from the Celestial Empire in the year 161 G," is the expression in 
De Quincey's copy for that original secession of the Torgouth 
Tartars from their eastern home on the Chinese borders for 
transference of themselves far w r est to Eussia, which was repaired 
and compensated by their return in 1771 under their Khan 
Oubache. As distinctly, on the other hand, the memoir of Kien 
Long refers the date of the original secession to no further back 
than the reign of his own grandfather, the Emperor Kang-hi, 
when Ayouki, the grandfather of Oubache, was Khan of the 
Torgouths, and induced them to part company with their over- 
bearing kinsmen the Eleuths, and seek refuge within the Kussian 
territories on the Volga. In the comment of the Chinese man- 
darin on the Imperial Memoir the time is more exactly indicated 



APPENDED EDITORIAL NOTE. 91 

by the statement that the Torgouths had remained u more than 
seventy years " in their Russian settlements when Oubache brough 
them back. This would refer us to about 1700, or, at furthest, 
to between 1090 and 1700, for the secession under Ayouki. 

The discrepancies are partly explained by the fact that Be 
Quincey followed Bergmann's account — which account differs 
avowedly in some particulars from that of the Chinese Memoirs. 
In Bergmann, I find, the original secession of the ancestors of 
Oubache' s Kalmuck horde from China to Russia is pushed back to 
1G10, just as in Be Quincey. But, though Be Quincey keeps by 
Bergmann when he pleases, be takes liberties with Bergmann 
too, intensifies Bergmann's story throughout, and adds much to 
it for which there is little or no suggestion in Bergmann. For 
example, the incident which Be Quincey introduces with such 
terrific effect as the closing catastrophe of the march of the fugi- 
tive Kalmucks before their arrival on the Chinese frontier — the 
incident of their thirst-maddened rush into the waters of Lake 
Tengis, and their wallow there in bloody struggle with their 
Bashkir pursuers — has no basis in Bergmann larger than a few 
slight and rather matter-of-fact sentences. As Bergmann himself 
refers here and there in his narrative to previous books, German 
or Russian, for his authorities, it is just possible that Be Quincey 
may have called some of these to his aid for any intensification 
or expansion of Bergmann he thought necessary. My impres- 
sion, however, is that he did nothing of the sort, but deputed any 
necessary increment of his Bergmann materials to his own lively 
imagination. — David Masson. 



EXPLANATORY NOTES. 



Page 9. The "Revolt of the Tartars; or, Flight of the Kal- 
muck Khan and His People from the Russian Territories to the Fron- 
tiers of China" was first printed in Blackwood's Magazine for July, 
1837 ; reprinted hy De Quincey, with hut slight verbal changes, in 1854, 
in the fourth volume of his collected writings. — Masson. 

P. 9, 1. 5. TJie Tartars are of Mongolian descent, and are found 
principally in western and central Asia. They are often nomadic, 
and generally hut half-civilized. 

P. 9, 1. 5. steppes. Vast plains in Russia and Asia, sometimes 
level, sometimes rolling, like the prairies of North America. They 
are usually covered by a thick growth of high grass, but are inter- 
spersed now and then by lakes, rivers, and patches of barren land. 

P. 9, 1. 7. terminus a quo, starting-point, terminus ad quern, 
destination. 

P. 9, 1. 8, 9. De Quincey seems to confound the power of a throne 
with the number of people over whom it rules. 

P. 9, 1. 19. the lemming. Written either leming, or lemming. 
"The common European leming inhabits Norway, Sweden, Lapland, 
and other northern countries. It is about five inches long and of varied 
coloration. It is very prolific, and vast hordes periodically migrate 
down to the sea, destroying much vegetation in their path." — Cen- 
tury Dictionary . 

The words " and the leming " are an addition in the reprints of 
1851. — Masson. 

P. 10, 1. 4. Miltonic images. See Paradise Lost, I. 36-83, 169- 
191, 240-268; II. 14^2, 60-93, 165-186; VI. 832-881; Comus, 205-209. 
Have not the pictures been modified by De Quincey's imagination? 
See his Vision of Sudden Death for examples of similar transforming 
power. 



94 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

Page 10, Line 6. Ancient chaos. Cf. " chaos and old night," 
Par. Lost, I. 545. 

P. 10, 1. 10. I. In the first edition De Quincey had used the 
" editorial we " throughout. 

P. 10, 1. 23. Venice Preserved, a tragedy hy Thomas Otway, 
1651-1685. It is considered his masterpiece, and is one of the few 
enduring works of the so-called " Restoration drama " of England. 

P. 10, 1. 24. Fiesco. One of the early tragedies of the German 
poet Friedrich Schiller, 1759-1805. Schiller belonged to the "Ro- 
mantic period " of German literature, and was contemporary with 
Goethe. 

P. 10, 1. 29. Cambyses III., King of the Medes and Persians, 529- 
522 B.C., and the son of Cyrus the Great, having overrun and devas- 
tated Egypt, annexed it to the Persian Empire. This expedition is 
supposed to have taken place about 525 b.c. 

P. 11, 1. 1. The famous "retreat of the ten thousand" Greeks 
who had served under Cyrus the younger, in his attempt to displace 
his brother Artaxerxes from the throne of Persia, took place in 401 
B.C. These Greeks, 8,100 in number, made their retreat from Cu- 
naxa, near Babylon, to Trapezus (now Trebizond) on the southern 
shore of the Black Sea, a distance of seven hundred miles. Their 
route lay through an unknown and inhospitable country, and was 
made more difficult by mountains, the severities of winter, and the 
attacks of hostile natives. Six thousand Greeks reached Trapezus. 

P. 11, 1. 3. Parthia, a country in south-western Asia, situated 
east of Media and south of Hyrcania, was the centre of the Parthian 
Empire, nearly coextensive with the first Persian Empire. It was 
invaded by Crassus, 54 b.c. Crassus was utterly defeated, taken 
prisoner, and put to death by the pouring of molten gold down his 
throat in punishment of his rapacity in plundering palaces and tem- 
ples. An invasion of Persia by Julian, called the Apostate, in 363 
a.d., was equally disastrous, resulting in the death of Julian and the 
complete overthrow of his army. 

P. 11, 1. 6. Anabasis, an ascent or expedition inward ; katabasis, 
a descent or (in this case) retreat or expedition backward. — Masson. 

P. 11, 1. 6. The famous expedition of Napoleon to Moscow, in 
1812. He set out in the spring with an army of more than 600,000 
men. In Lithuania alone, 100,000 men were lost by fatigue, disease, 
and the attacks of the Cossacks who hung upon their flanks. About 



EXPLANATORY NOTES. 95 

the middle of September he entered Moscow. A few days later a fire 
broke out which reduced the city to a heap of ruins. When he began 
his retreat, Oct. 19, he had 120,000 men. Of these, 90,000 perished. 

Page 11, Line 10. exodus. See Old Testament, Ex. i.-xvii. ; 
Josh, i.-xii. 

P. 11, 1. 29. Koulagina, perhaps Kologinskaia, about one hun- 
dred miles from the mouth of the Ural. 

P. 12, 1. 1. The Cossacks are a warlike, half-civilized people 
living in south-eastern Russia and western Siberia. 

P. 12, 1. 1. Ouehim. At the northern end of the Mugojar 
mountains, and about 300 miles west of Turgai. 

P. 12, 1. 2. The Bashkirs are of Finnish and Tartar ancestry, 
warlike and uncivilized. They have been conquered and taken into 
the empire by Russia. They live in south-eastern Russia, west of the 
Ural mountains. 

P. 12, 1. 3. Turgai, a city and river of western Siberia, in the 
province of Turgansk. 

P. 12, 1.6. The Lake of Tengis. See note to p. 74, 1. 29. . 

P. 15, 1. 7. MachiaveUi, celebrated Italian statesman and author, 
1469-1527. In his work, II Principe, a treatise on government, " polit- 
ical morality is disregarded and tyrannical methods of rule are incul- 
cated." 

" I should be cautious of inculcating such a principle if all men were 
good ; but as they are all wicked, and ever ready to break their words, a 
prince should not pique himself in keeping his more scrupulously — and it is 
always easy to justify this want of faith. I could give numerous proofs of 
it, and show how many engagements and treaties have been broken by the 
infidelity of princes ; the most fortunate of whom has always been he who 
best understood how to assume the character of the fox. The object is to 
act his part well, and to know how in due time to feign and dissemble. And 
men are so simple and so weak that he who wishes to deceive easily finds 
dupes." — From The Prince, chap, xviii. 

The pupil may amuse himself by discovering the faults and falla- 
cies in this characteristic utterance of MachiaveUi. 

P. 15, 1. 17. Elizabeth Fetrowna. Empress of Russia, 1741- 
1762; daughter of Peter the Great and Catharine I. ; founder of the 
University of Moscow and of the Academy of Fine Arts at St. Peters- 
burg. She was lacking in energy, firmness, and sense of justice, and 



90 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

allowed herself to be ruled by her favorites. Of profligate character 
herself, "profligacy, espionage, and persecution reigned in her court, 
the administration of justice was restrained, and the finances neg- 
lected ; but she was nevertheless extremely strict in the observance 
of the public ordinances of religion." 

Page 16, Line 1. Tcherkask, or Circassia, a Russian city thirty 
miles north-east of the Sea of Azov. 

P. 19, 1. 1. behemoth. Hebrew for "great beast," Job xi. 15. 
See also Par. Lost, VII. 480. 

"Behemoth, biggest born of eartb, upheaved 
His vastness." 

P. 19, 1. 1. 3Iuscovy. An old name for Russia, 

P. 19, 1. 4. "lion ramp." See Milton's Samson Agonistes, 
1. 139, and Par. Lost, IV. 343. Cf. the heraldic term " rampant." 

P. 19, 1. 4. "baptized and infidel," Par. Lost, I. 582. 

P. 19, 1. 6. "barbaric East." See Par. Lost, II. 3, 4. Has De 
Quincey this passage in mind? Cf. note to p. 69, 1. 4. 

P. 19, 1. 12. "unity of a well-laid tragic fable." " The prin- 
ciple by which a uniform tenor of story and propriety of representa- 
tion is preserved in literary compositions ; a reference to some one 
purpose or leading idea, or to the main proposition, in all the parts 
of a discourse or composition." — Century Dictionary . 

For further explanation, see the Century Dictionary; Aristotle's 
Poetics, Part II., Sects, iii.-v. ; Schlegel's Dramatic Literature, Lec- 
tures xvii. and xviii. ; Moulton's Ancient Classical Drama, p. 124, 
et seq. 

P. 20, 1. 22. Kien Long, Emperor of China from 1735 to 1796, 
was the fourth Chinese emperor of the Mantchoo-Tartar dynasty, 
and a man of the highest reputation for ability and accomplishment. 
— Masson. 

P. 20, 1. 26. Chinese wall. The Great Wall of China was com- 
pleted in 211 B.C. Several millions of men are said to have been em- 
ployed for ten years in the construction of it. It is about 1,255 miles 
long, from 20 to 25 feet high, with towers 100 yards apart and 40 feet 
high, broad enough at the top to allow six horsemen to ride abreast, 
and made of hewn stone or brick faces, with earth thrown in between. 
It runs along the boundary line between China and Mongolia, begin- 
ning at the sea-shore. 



EXPLANATORY NOTES. 97 

Page 22, Line 3. Lama is a Thibetan word for " spiritual lord ; " 
the clergy of the Thibetans and other Mongolians are called Lamas ; 
and their religion, which is a kind of Buddhism, is called Lamaism. 

There are nominally two popes of the Lamaist religion ; but the 
really supreme pope is the Dalai-Lama, i.e., "Ocean-Priest," resid- 
ing at Potola, near Lassa, in Thibet. — Masson. 

Lamaism is a corrupted form of Buddhism prevailing in Thibet 
and Mongolia. Its ethical and metaphysical ideas are those of 
Buddhism. It has an organized hierarchy with political power, 
" an elaborate ritual, and the worship of a host of deities and 
saints." 

P. 22, 1. 14. howling wilderness. Deut. xxxii. 10. 

P. 24, 1. 14. The war was begun in 1768, when Mustapha III. 
was Sultan of Turkey; and it was continued till 1774. — Masson. 

P. 25, 1. 28. It will be difficult, I think, to find record in the his- 
tory of the Busso-Turkish War, begun in 17G8, of any battle answer- 
ing to this. — Masson. 

It can easily be seen by the reader that De Quincey cares more for 
the pictorial and dramatic effects of his narrative than for strict his- 
toric truth. 

P. 2G, 1. 7. In the cycle of romances centring about Charle- 
magne, the knights in his court were called Paladins. The name 
later came to signify any knight-errant attendant on a sovereign. 

P. 27, 1. 12. For an account of the Bussian religion, see Tolstoi's 
My Religion and What to Do. See also accounts of the Greek Church 
in encyclopaedias and elsewhere. Bussian Christianity still has more 
of mediaeval enslavement to ceremony and tradition than the "West- 
ern Church. 

P. 27, 1. 26. Elizabeth had been succeeded in 1762 by her nephew, 
Peter III., who had reigned but a few months when he was dethroned 
by a conspiracy of Bussian nobles, headed by his German wife, Cath- 
erine. She became empress in his stead, and reigned from 1762 to 
1796 as Catherine II. — Masson. 

P. 28, 1. 29. See p. 61, 1. 14, et seq. 

P. 29, 1. 14, et seq. See the account on p. 22. 

P. 30, 1. 16. See Appendix, p. 86. 

P. 32, 1. 15. The Khirgises and Bashkirs are barbarous tribes 
living east of the Caspian Sea. They also are of partly Mongolian 
extraction. See note to p. 12, 1. 2. 



98 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

Page 33, Line 8. Sarepta is a Moravian city, near the great bend 
of the Volga. 

P. 33, 1. 27. Cf. the speech of Ariovistixs in Caesar's Commenta- 
ries, I. 11, 12. 

P. 31, 1. 19. Tiie Teraba. The Emha river, which empties into 
the Caspian Sea from the north-east. 

P. 30, 1. 24. Astrachan is a Russian province lying on both sides 
of the Volga, near its mouth, — the province in which the revolting 
Kalmucks had their home. 

P. 37, 1. 17. We are accustomed to think of the travel by horses 
in the last century as necessarily very slow. But the system of 
travelling post — that is, by relays of horses — made possible a fairly 
rapid transit. In The English Mail-Coach Do Quincey speaks of 
the coach as on ii post-office allowance, in some cases of fifty minutes 
for eleven miles." 

P. 38, 1. 18. Is this the tribe that was cut down later by the 
Cossacks? See pp. 40-18. 

P. 38, 1. 2G. Cf. Caesar, Commentaries, I. 4, and Cortes' action in 
his expedition to Mexico. 

P. 42,1. 1. The inroads of the Huns into Europe extended from 
the third century into the fifth; those of the Avars from the sixth 
century to the eighth or ninth; the first great conquests by the 
Mongol Tartars were by Genghis Khan, the founder of a Mongol 
empire which stretched, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, 
from China to Poland. — Masson. 

The Avars are supposed to have come from the same Turanian 
stock as the Huns, from the land lying east of the Tobol in Siberia. 
They were subdued by Charlemagne, and later by the Moravians. 
After 827 they disappear from history. The Huns overran and 
defeated the Chinese Empire about 200 B.C., and again terrorized 
Europe until the death of their great leader, Attila, in 454 a.d. 

P. 42, 1. 7. See note to p. 11, 1. G. 

P. 42, 1. 18. Singular it is, and not generally known, that Grecian 
women accompanied the anabasis of the younger Cyrus and the 
subsequent Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Xenophon affirms that 
there were "many" women in the Greek army, — -rroWal i^aav eralpai 
Zv tu o-Tpa.Tev[j.aTt. • and in a late stage of that trying expedition it is evi- 
dent that women were among the survivors. — De Quincey's Note. 

Does De Quincey forget that every schoolboy who went to college 



EXPLANATORY NOTES. 99 

in the last century and the first half of this, prohahly read enough of 
the Anabasis to come across this passage? See the Anabasis, IV. 
iii. 19. and IV. vii. 2. 

Page 42, Line 28. See note to p. 11, 1. 10. 

P. 43, 1. 9. The pestilence in Athens, b.c. 430. "No human 
art was of any avail ; and as to supplications in temples, inquiries of 
oracles, and the like, they were utterly useless, and at last men were 
overpowered by the calamity, and gave them all up. The disease is 
said to have begun south of Egypt, in ^Ethiopia," and to have carried 
off one-fourth of the people. See Thucydides, II. 47-54. 

P. 43, 1. 10. The "Great Plague of London," in 16G5-1GC6. 
Pepys writes on Sept. 4, 1665: "I have stayed in the city till above 
7,400 died in one week, and of them about G,000 of the plague, and 
little noise heard day or night but tolling of bells." For further 
details see Pepys' Diary, 1665, DeFoe's Journal of the Plague, and 
various histories of England. 

P. 43, 1. 18. The Roman Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus, 
after having overcome all the other cities of Juda3a, often with great 
slaughter, captured Jerusalem a.d. 70, after a siege of one year. 
"The number of those that perished during the whole siege [was] 
1,100,000, the greater part of whom were indeed of the same nation, 
but not belonging to the city itself ; for they were come up from all 
the country to the feast of unleavened bread, and were on a sudden 
shut up by an army, which at the very first occasioned co great a 
straitness among them that there came a pestilential destruction 
upon them, and soon afterwards such a famine as destroyed them 
more suddenly." — Josephus, Whiston's translation. 

P. 44, 1. 1. Ural. Called also Yaik, Iaik, and Jaik. 

P. 45, 1. 18. French for ferocity, lust of slaughter. 

P. 46, 1. 15. See note to p. 11, 1. 29. 

P. 46, 1. 27. Bactria was an ancient province in the region of 
Afghanistan and Turkestan. Its capital, Bactra, stood upon the 
site of the present Balkh. The Bactrian and the Arabian camel 
are different species. 

P. 47, 1. 21. pasturage. The reader will remember that the 
expedition is taking place in midwinter. What, then, does De 
Quincey mean? 

P. 50, 1. 2. "Trashed." This is an expressive word used by 
Beaumont and Fletcher in their Bonduca, etc., to describe the 



100 REVOLT OF TIIE TARTARS. 

case of a person embarrassed and retarded in flight, or in pursuit, by- 
some encumbrance, whether thing or person, too valuable to be left 
behind. — De Quincey's Note. 

Page 50, Line 6. summa rerum, the most important and criti- 
cal thing ; the turning-point of their fortunes. The reader may sug- 
gest a good idiomatic translation for the phrase. 

P. 52, 1. 17. The Mugojar or Mugodschar mountains. See note 
to p. 12, 1. 1. 

P. 53, 1. 23. There was another ouloss equally strong with that 
of Feka-Zechorr, viz., that of Erketunn, under the government of 
Assarcho and Machi, whom some obligations of treaty or other hid- 
den motives drew into the general revolt. But fortunately the two 
chieftains found means to assure the governor of Astrachan, on the 
first outbreak of the insurrection, that their real wishes were for 
maintaining the old connection with Russia. The Cossacks, there- 
fore, to whom the pursuit was intrusted, had instructions to act cau- 
tiously and according to circumstances on coming up with them. 
The result was, through the prudent management of Assarcho, that 
the clan, without compromising their pride or independence, made 
such moderate submissions as satisfied the Cossacks ; and eventually 
both chiefs and people received from the Czarina the rewards of 
exemplary fidelity. — De Quincey's Note. 

P. 55, 1. 9. See note to p. 22, 1. 14. 

P. 57, 1. 2. See Herodotus, VII. 45, 4G, for the account of this 
oft-narrated incident. 

P. 58, 1. 19. See Appendix; see also the inscription quoted at 
the end of this narrative. 

P. 58, 1. 28. Orsk. In the pass between the Ural mountains and 
the Mugojar hills. 

P. 59, 1. 1. Orenburgsk, near Turgai, in the province of Tur- 
gansk ; not to be confused with Orenburg on the frontier of Russia. 

P. 61, 1. 25. Mr. The Russian equivalent for Mi', is Gospodin. 
Is De Quincey's substitution good? 

P. 67, 1. 27. Quoted li*om Othello, Act V., sc. ii., near the end of 
the scene. 

P. 67, 1. 29. enraged hornets. Note Milton's stronger use of the 
same figure, Samson Jgonistes, 19, 20. 

P. 68, 1. 23, 24. post equitem sedet atra cura. Behind tho 
horseman sits dark care. Horace, Ode III., 1. 37. 



EXPLANATORY NOTES. 101 



Page 69, Lines 4, 5. " from mora to dewy eve." 

" From morn 
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve." 

Par. Lost, I. 743, 744. 

P. 70, 1. 28. All the circumstances are learned from a long state 
paper upon the subject of this Kalmuck migration, drawn up in the 
Chinese language by the Emperor himself. Parts of this paper have 
been translated by the Jesuit missionaries. The Emperor states the 
whole motives of his conduct and the chief incidents at great length. 
— De Quincey's Note. 

P. 72, 1. 8. Camels " indorsed " — " and elephants indorsed with 
towers." Milton in Paradise Regained, III. 329. — De Quincey's 
Note. 

P. 74, 1. 12. Cortege. French for body-guard, or company of 
attendants. 

P. 74, 1. 29. There is some reason for regarding the scene that 
follows as fictitious and as a final imaginative nourish on the part of 
our author. Lake Tengiz lies in the province of Turgai, more than 
1,000 miles to the west of China. Lake Balkash, lying near the Bek- 
pak-dala steppe, or Hungry Desert, may be intended; but it is too 
far from the Desert of Kobi and too far from China to fit into the 
author's geography. It is seven or eight hundred miles from the 
nearest part of the great wall. Issyk-Kul Lake is open to the same 
objections, though in less degree ; it is, moreover, not bounded on the 
west by a desert, as the author's description demands. On the whole, 
it is perhaps wiser to regard this part of the narrative as a piece of 
fine writing than as having any basis of fact. But whatever we may 
think of it on grounds of fact, on grounds of rhetoric it justifies 
itself as an excellent piece of work, both in invention and in execu- 
tion. 

P. 78, 1. 7. "globes" and "turms." Anglicized Latin words, 
quoted from Milton, meaning throngs, and troops of horse. See Para- 
dise Regained, IV. 66. 

"globes " is used by Milton in Par. Lost, II. 512, and Par. Re- 
gained, IV. 581 in the sense of throngs. — Lockwood's Lexicon to 
Milton's Poetical Works. 

"turms," used in Par. Regained, IV. 66, in the sense of troops. 

P. 79, 1. 12, et seq. " The nation of the Tourgouths (known as the 



102 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

Kalmucks) arrived at Ily all in rags, having neither the means of 
living nor of clothing themselves. I had foreseen this, and, in order 
to be able to aid them promptly, had ordered the necessary provisions 
of every kind to be prepared; this was accomplished. We have 
made a division of the lands, and have assigned to each family a 
portion sufficient to serve for its maintenance, either by cultivation 
or by use for grazing. We have given to each individual material 
for clothing himself, grain for feeding himself during the space of a 
year, utensils for the house, and other necessary things ; and in addi- 
tion several ounces of silver in order that he may provide himself 
with whatever we may have forgotten. We have set aside some 
particular places rich in pasturage ; and we have given to them some 
cattle, sheep, etc., so that they may be able eventually to work for 
themselves for their maintenance and their comfort." 

Page 80, Line 8, et seq. " When they arrived on our frontier 
(to the number of several hundreds of thousands, although extreme 
fatigue, hunger, thirst, and the other hardships inseparable from a 
very long and painful route, had caused almost as "many to perish), 
they were reduced to extreme misery ; they had lost everything. He 
(the Emperor, Kien Long) caused to be prepared for them lodgings 
suitable to their manner of living. He had food and clothing dis- 
tributed to them ; he had cattle, sheep, and utensils given to them 
in order to put them in a condition to breed cattle, and to cultivate 
the land. All this was at his own expense, and amounted to im- 
mense sums, not counting the silver which he had given to each Lead 
of a family to provide for the support of his wife and children." 

P. 82, 1. 25. " Nor is there any law more just than that plotters 
of evil should perish by their own device." 

Lex talionis. The law of retaliation. See its statement, for 
example, in the Mosaic law of "an eye for an eye," etc. 

P. 83, 1. 3. lares. The household deities, or gods of the hearth, 
worshipped by the Romans. The term came later to be synonymous 
with hearth or home. 

P. 83, 1. 8. Arcadian. Arcadia was the central part of the Pelo- 
ponnesus. The simple, rural, and ignorant character of its inhabitants 
led the lyric and pastoral poets to idealize it as the land of peace, 
plenty, and happiness. 

P. 83, 1. 15. See note to p. 43, 1. 9. 

P. 84, 1. 33. See Appendix, p. 89. 



CRITICAL NOTES. 



The following notes and questions are intended as suggestions to 
the teacher as well as to the pupil ; and it is hoped that the pupil 
may get some stimulus from the independent use of them. Some, 
at least, of the following hooks should be accessible to the student : 
Genung's Practical Elements of Rhetoric, and Outlines of Rhetoric, 
Ginn & Co. ; Hill's Foundations of Rhetoric, and Principles of Rhet- 
oric, Harper Bros. ; Carpenter's Exercises in Rhetoric and Composi- 
tion, The MacmMlan Co. A dictionary of synonyms, such as Crabbe's 
or Roget's, and, above all, an unabridged dictionary, should be easy 
of access to every student. 

Read the essay as a whole before beginning to study it minutely 
and critically. No true criticism can consider the parts aside from 
their relation to the whole. Then consider the larger divisions of 
the essay, and note what relations they have to the whole and to 
each other. 



How many paragraphs does the introduction comprise ? What 
are the functions of an introduction ? See Genung's Practical Ele- 
ments of Rhetoric, pp. 207-270. Notice the functions of the first 
paragraph ; the sustained dignity of the diction, the appeals to the 
imagination, the associations recalled, the energy depicted. Show 
what purposes the author has in view in these things. 

Page 9, Lines 1-6. Note the effect of including time, place, and 
event in the introductory sentence. Note the effect of the diction : 
earliest, flight, eastward, boundless, etc. Do these words appeal 
to the imagination or to the feelings? 

P. 9, 1. 5. steppes. Why is this word better than plains? 

103 



104 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

Page 9, Line 7. terminus a quo, and terminus ad quern. 

Translate into idiomatic English. Is there any gain in using the 
Latin ? If so, what is it ? 

P. 9, 1. 8, 9. What antithesis in these lines? Cf. the words in the 
first and third sentences which suggest this same antithesis. 

P. 9, 1. 10. harmoniously flight. Make this clear by 

paraphrasing it. 

P. 9, 1. 11. Romantic. How distinguished from fictitious, 
strange, and unusual? Cite concrete examples to illustrate. 

P. 9, 1. 12. Abruptness. Cf. Suddenness, quickness, violence, 
energy. 

P. 9, 1. 15. How many is a myriad? Is the definite or the in- 
definite term better here? "Why? 

P. 10, 1. 1-9. Loose or periodic sentence? What effects are at- 
tained by this arrangement ? 

P. 10, 1. 15. Collation. Substitute a more familiar word. Cite 
other cases where the author uses the more formal and elaborate 
manner of expression. Take this first paragraph, reduce it to a 
simple and unadorned statement of the main ideas, and then say 
what the author has gained by his diction. 

P. 10, 1. 10. complexity. Does the author anywhere analyze 
this complexity? 

P. 10, 1. 27, 28. ascertained .... prefigured. Notice the dis- 
criminating use of these words. 

P. 11, 1. 15, et seq. What promise is here fulfilled? What prom- 
ise here implied that is not fulfilled later? 

P. 12, 1. 11. What is meant by a philosophic interest? 

P. 12, 1. 14. Explain the epithet, simple-hearted. Note its re- 
currence later, p. 15, 1. 10, and elsewhere. Does it denote a moral or 
an intellectual quality? Cf. also p. 13, 1. 2-5 and 8-10. Is there any 
inconsistency ? 

P. 12, 1. 16. What relation to the narrative proper does this sen- 
tence sustain? 

P. 13, 1. 5. Unparalleled. What other word than conceit does 
this modify? Loose or periodic order? Reduce this sentence to com- 
monplace diction; then show which words of De Quincey's are most 
effective. 

P. 13, 1. 15-18. What antithesis here? 

P. 14, 1. 12-14. Cf. p. 13, 1. 14, 20, 22, 28, et seq. Is there any con- 



CRITICAL NOTES. 105 

tradiction or ambiguity here ? If not, show what word in the context 
obviates it. 

Page 14, Lrae 20. Note the way in which the two principal 
actors are introduced. Why is Oubacha introduced first? 

P. 14, 1. 28. What is meant by a philosophical observer? Is the 
view on p. 11, 1. 1G, to p. 12, 1. 15, that of a, philosophical observer? 

P. 15, 1. 8, 9. Give synonyms for perfidy and remorse. State 
definitely the meaning of these terms. 

P. 15, 1. 9. Calculated. Used here in its primary or secondary 
sense? Cf. the New England provincial use of this word, and the 
common use in America of " I guess " and " I reckon." 

P. 15, 1. 19. Note the order of this sentence. What expectation 
does it create ? 

P. 15, 1. 21. Just what is meant by arming suspicions? How 
does it differ from arousing suspicions? What figure of speech is it? 

P. 16, 1. 2. tents. What figure of speech? How does this make 
the sentence more graphic? 

P. 16, 1. 5-10. Note the use of the indefinite and general statement, 
followed by particulars. Point out the terms that are general in their 
nature. 

P. 16, 1. 8. thus .... introducing. Grammatical construction ? 
Is there any ambiguity ? 

Notice the gradual development of Zebek-Dorchi's character. 
How much is given through action ? How much through characteri- 
zation ? 

P. 16, 1. 14. Explain balance of power. What figure of speech? 

P. 17, 1. 17-21, et seq. Where else is this same idea expressed? 

P. 18, 1. 2. See note on p. 12, 1. 14. See also p. 24, 1. 7. 

P. 18, 1. 18. gloomy. Does this refer to moral or material things ? 

P. 18, 1. 19, et seq. Note De Quincey's analytical habit of mind. 
Cf. the self-analyses of Iago and Richard III. 

P. 18, 1. 25, et seq. Select the epithets by which the author dig- 
nifies his theme. 

P. 19, 1. 4 and 6. See under Notes — Explanatory. Is the 
author's imitation of Milton one of diction only, or also of spirit and 
attitude ? Give reasons for your opinion, and select the passages upon 
which you base it. 

P. 19, 1. 12. Is this the attitude of the historian or of the literary 
critic ? 



106 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

Page 19, Line 18. Effect of the inverted order? How else might 
a similar effect be produced ? 

P. 20, 1. 2-14. What faulty construction in this sentence? Is 
there any defence to be made of it? Trace the climax in this sen- 
tence. 

P. 20, 1. 10. Grammatical construction of frost and snow ? Note 
the gain in force by brevity. 

P. 20, 1. 13, 14. Where has this idea been expressed before? 

P. 20, 1. 18. that view. In what view? 

P. 20, 1. 21. Are these ideas supplementary or antithetical? 

P. 21, 1. 1. delicate. Meaning? Synonyms? 

P. 22, 1. 5. terrific. Note the author's frequent use of this word. 
See pp. 23, 29, and elsewhere. Does it seem to be a stronger word 
than necessary? Can you find any other words that he has a ten- 
dency to " overwork " ? 

P. 23, 1. 1-11. Note the frequent long sentences. What sort of 
mental qualities do they reveal in the author? Compare a number 
of them, and discover their common traits. 

P. 23, 1. 23. precisely. What would be the usual position of the 
adverb? What is the effect of this position? 

P. 24, 1. 5. definitively. Does this differ from definitely ? 

P. 24, 1. 12. withering. Cf. p. 9, 1. 19. Why does this word not 
seem to be used too often ? 

P. 24, 1. 16. vassalage. Distinguish vassalage, slavery, serfdom, 
subjection, subordination. 

P. 24, 1. 20. What deviation from the normal order here? 

P. 24, 1. 29. jealousy. In what sense is the word used ? 

P. 25, 1. 7. forever. Is this word too strong? How does it har- 
monize with the prevailing style in this paper? 

P. 25, 1. 10-17. Determine from the context what motives Ouba- 
cha had for so doing. Does De Quincey make it clear? 

P. 25, 1. 23. concerned. Definite or indefinite term? Substitute 
one that seems equally good. 

P. 25, 1. 22-29. Do you see any departure from a perfect climax? 
What ambiguity does the sentence contain? 

P. 26, 1. 3. in acquired. What other position might 

this phrase have? What would be gained or lost by the change? 

P. 26, 1. 10. precarious alms. Paraphrase this. What reason 
for the comma after alms? 



CRITICAL NOTES. 107 

Page 26, Line 22. ukase. Derivation. "What other "word of the 
same meaning has De Quincey previously used ? 

P. 26, 1. 22-24. What is gained by the broken form of this sen- 
tence ? 

P. 26, 1. 26. life-deep. Cf. life-withering, p. 9, 1. 19. What is it 
that makes this a poetic word? Can you cite compound words of 
similar effect from Tennyson or Milton ? 

P. 26, 1. 27. accommodation. In what sense used here ? 

P. 26, 1. 28. What expectation is aroused at this point? Note the 
effect of the ending of the sentence. 

P. 27, 1. 4-16. What analysis of character and feelings is given 
here? 

P. 27, 1. 15. Can any objection be made to the figure in this line? 

P. 27, 1. 22. chiefly. Find for this word another place in the sen- 
tence. 

P. 28, 1. 1-10. Make a loose sentence of this by a slight rearrange- 
ment. What is the difference in the effect? 

P. 28, 1. 16. set the seal. Paraphrase this. What figure of 
speech? 

P. 28. 1. 19. doubtful. Is this redundant? 

P. 29, 1. 3-13. Is it good narration to bring this in at this point? 
Cf. p. 22, et seq. 

P. 29, 1. 26. ghostly. Substitute another word. 

P. 29, 1. 28. unsteady demeanor. Note the excellent choice of 
words. Can you substitute a single word? 

P. 30, 1. 1. To what changes does the author refer? 

P. 30, 1. 12. In just what sense is prejudice used ? 

P. 30, 1. 13. lowest. Is anything implied more than is expressed ? 

P. 30, 1. 14. For in quality of substitute one word. What char- 
acteristic of the author's style is here indicated? 

P. 30, 1. 16. derived. Meaning of this word in its intransitive use ? 

P. 30, 1. 19. by improving, et seq. With what is this phrase 
grammatically connected? 

P. 30, 1. 10-29. Note the resume of conditions and causes. Is this 
passage narrative or analytic? 

P. 30, 1. 17-24. Analyze and rearrange the ideas contained in this 
clause. Note the awkwardness in the way the relatives are used. 

P. 30, 1. 27. criminal facility. Meaning ? Cf. the slang use of 
the word easy. 



108 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

Page 31, Lines 6-20. Cf. pp. 16 and 17. Is it good narration to 
give these facts in this place? Give the reason for your opinion. 

P. 31, 1. 27. Note the fine antithesis. 

P. 31, 1. 22-29. Note the elaborate and stately style. To which 
words and ideas is the effect chiefly due ? 

P. 32, 1. 4. hazard throw. How accurate is this com- 
parison ? 

P. 32, 1. 17. immemorial. Is this word too strong? Cf. p. 84, 
1.27. 

P. 32, 1. 20-23. Note the effectiveness of the form and rhythm of 
this sentence. 

P. 32, 1. 25. Can you discover what use was made of this parch- 
ment at the rendezvous ? 

P. 33, 1. 27. were vised. "What is the more common colloquial 
form? Why is the passive form better? 

P. 34, 1. 2. vast. Is this word necessary? Why is it effective? 

P. 34, 1. 10. if so. For what longer phrase does this stand ? 

P. 34, 1. 22. conscious security. Does the adjective make the 
noun subjective or objective? 

P. 34, 1. 22-23. hold language. Note the effectiveness 

of the idiom. 

P. 34, 1. 24. audience. Used in what sense ? 

P. 34, 1. 25-29. Note here, as elsewhere, De Quincey's lavish use 
of adjectives. What is the effect upon the simplicity of his style? 

P. 35, 1. 6-9. What ideas are made co-ordinate? 

P. 35, 1. 11-13. Try the effect of making the first clause of this 
sentence subordinate. 

P. 35, 1. 20, 21. What co-ordinate parts are not symmetrical in 
form? Make them so. 

P. 36, 1. 17, 18. Note the frequent occurrence of this forecast of 
disaster. What is the effect of it ? 

P. 36, 1. 19. What is gained by the brevity of the first clause? 

P. 36, 1. 20. came. Note the change to the Russian point of 
view. Is it justifiable? 

P. 37, 1. 2. bigotry. Define accurately. Is the word used here 
in its usual application? 

P. 37, 1. 14-16. Note the analysis of emotion. By what other 
means might the same impression have been given us? 

P. 37, 1. 14-24. What gives this sentence such strength? 



CRITICAL NOTES. 109 

Page 37, Lines 24-29. Note the elaborate style. Cf. the sim- 
plicity and brevity in Browning's My Last Duchess : — 

" I gave commands, 
Then all smiles stopped together ; there she stands, 
As if alive." 

P. 38, 1. 9, 10. Note the force of the definite numerals. Cf. 
previous use of " myriads." 

P. 39, 1. 7. applied, et seq. Substitute a shorter phrase 

P. 39, 1. 9. whole. Grammatical construction. 

P. 39, 1. 12-15; 19-22. Paraphrase into simpler forms. 

P. 39, 1. 13. valedictory vengeance. Note the alliteration and 
the rhythm. Do you find much use of the former in this paper? 

P. 39, 1. 15-22. Why is this sentence not simple? If the second 
half were reduced to a simple form, what would be lost? 

P. 39, 1. 23. happily. What synonymous word ? 

P. 39, 1. 24. providential. Etymological meaning? Implied 
meaning determined by its customary use? 

P. 39, 1. 25. What advantage in repeating this fact? 

P. 39, 1. 27. Condense this line into a brief phrase. 

P. 40, 1. 1. unless. Cf. except. What difference in the use of 
the two words ? 

P. 40, 1. 2. Cf. the beginning of this sentence with the end of the 
last. What is gained by this sort of transition ? 

P. 40, 1. 3. aggravate. What inaccurate use does this word 
often have? 

P. 40, 1. 3. thousandfold. Is this word used definitely or in- 
definitely? 

P. 40, 1. 4. inevitable. Account for the position of the adjective. 

P. 40, 1. 14, 15. might not be. What tense would you have 
expected here? Is this accurate? 

P. 40, 1. 1G. laden. What is the present tense of this verb? 

P. 40, 1. 18. on January. Account for the punctuation. 

P. 40, 1. 21. certain. Used in what sense? 

P. 40, 1. 2G. Be. What mood ? 

P. 41, 1. 3. universally. Make an adjective of this, and insert 
it in the proper place in the sentence. Is this word too strong ? 

P. 41, 1. 5. surprised. Cf. the weaker and more common use of 
the term. 



110 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

Page 41, Line 18. Criticise the construction here. 

P. 41, 1. 26, et seq. Contrast the general style here with the de- 
tailed and specific style of Pepys' Diary, and DeFoe's History of the 
Plague in London. How many times has the author given us this 
" foretaste " of the sufferings of the Tartars? How many times does 
he make the comparison with other great national calamities? Does 
he seem to you to have the power of graphic description? Cf. pas- 
sages in Carlyle's French Revolution, and Hamlet's account of the 
opening of the sealed letters, Act V., sc. ii. 

P. 41, 1. 26. unroll. Note the effectiveness of the word. 

P. 42, 1. 1-21. Is there too much digression here? See p. 6, 
1. 24-27. 

P. 42, 1. 9. feeble and miniature. Is there any redundancy 
here ? 

P. 42, 1. 12. vials of wrath. "What is the source of this famil- 
iar expression ? 

P. 42, 1. 13. devoted. Used in what sense? 

P. 43, 1. 1, 2. released .... flight. In allusion to what? Ex- 
press the fact definitely. 

P. 43, 1. 5. Earthquakes, et seq. Does the description gain or 
lose by introducing this comparison? 

P. 43, 1. 11. martyrs. Used accurately? See dictionary. 

P. 43, 1. 1G. Is this statement accurate? 

P. 43, 1. 25. romantic misery. Explain. 

P. 44, 1. 7-13. "What gives its strength and beauty to this sen- 
tence? 

P. 44. 1. 15. monotonous. Where in the paper has the author 
spoken of the "fierce varieties" of the misery of the Kalmucks? 
Does he contradict himself? 

P. 44, 1. 18, 19. Keep this passage in mind, and see whether our 
author fulfils his promise. 

P. 44, 1. 24. moulding hands. "What figure? Express the idea 
literally. 

P. 44, 1. 25-28. See note on " unity of a well-laid tragic fable," 
p. 19, 1. 12. Does De Quincey seem to have a vivid realization of the 
suffering he attempts to describe, or does he see it only as a dra- 
matic critic ? See note on p. 41, 1. 26. 

P. 44, 1. 29. Comment upon the propriety of this figure. 

P. 45, 1. 4-6. Condense and simplify. 



CRITICAL NOTES'. Ill 

Page 45, Line 8. decrement. Substitute decrease. What differ- 
ence in effect ? 

P. 45, 1. 12. Of whom were these armies composed? Is the ad- 
jective strictly accurate? Cf. the definite and indefinite function 
of such adjectives. 

P. 45, 1. 15. Distinguish between farther and further. 

P. 45, 1. 17. Cf. p. 70, 1. 13-29, and criticise the accuracy of this 
statement. 

P. 45, 1. 20-23. See note on p. 44, 1. 18, 19. 

P. 46, 1. 6. innumerable. What figure of speech ? 

P. 46, 1. 9-11. Point out the effective arrangement of this sen- 
tence. 

P. 46. 1. 16. invested. Primary or secondary meaning? sum- 
moned. Meaning? 

P. 46, 1. 20, 21. Account for the graphic effect of these lines. 

P. 46, 1. 24. usages warfare. Just what is meant by 

this? 

P. 47, 1. 9. See note on p. 32, 1. 17, 18. 

P. 47, 1. 10-25. State briefly the logical sequence in this passage. 

P. 47, 1. 21. pasturage. In what season of the year was the 
Tartar exodus? 

P. 47, 1. 21, 22, 24, 28. Select the adjectives by which the author 
conveys an idea of the number of their cattle. 

P. 48, 1. 6. held and styled. Is this redundant? Give the rea- 
son for your opinion. 

P. 48, 1. 8-15. Show where the construction of this sentence is 
not symmetrical. 

P. 48, 1. 16. raised. Meaning? What figure of speech? 

P. 48, 1. 20-24. Account for the force and beauty of a part of this 
sentence, and for the weak effect of its ending. 

P. 49, 1. 1-12. What lack of symmetry in this sentence? Does it 
gain or lose thereby ? 

P. 49, 1. 7. difficult and obscure. What distinction of syno- 
nyms here ? 

P. 49, 1. 13. that. Conjunction or pronoun? 

P. 49, 1. 18. but. Equivalent to what two words? 

P. 49, 1.. 20-21. Whose excitement and sympathy are meant? 

P. 50, 1. 9. week. Cf. p. 48, 1. 3. Account for the discrepancy 
in time. 






112 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

Page 50, Line 13. Note the effect of repetition. 

P. 50, 1. 25. Note the emphasis by arrangement. Note the rapid 
movement of the narrative from this point on ; the gain in force 
from the greater number of dynamic words ; the effect of the greater 
frequency of short sentences. 

P. 50, 1. 28. out of. What is the more common idiom? 

P. 51, 1. 2. to. What other word could be used ? 

P. 51, 1. 4. Point out the ambiguity in pronouns. 

P. 51, 1. 9, 10. See note on p. 36, 1. 17, 18. Cf. also pp. 79-81. Is 
there any inconsistency ? 

P. 51, 1.28. exclusively. What is the usual form in similar con- 
structions ? 

P. 52, 1. 8. and. Why should there not be a new sentence at this 
point ? 

P. 52, 1. 11-13. motives . . . exhausting. . Show that the 
thought and expression here are not direct. 

P. 53, 1. 6. trepidation. CI. fear, terror, alarm. 

P. 53, 1. 8. elite. What is now the usual application of this 
word ? 

P. 53, 1. 15. Hardy .... strong. Note the strength from the 
position of the adjectives. 

P. 54, 1. 15. To what does the namely refer? 

P. 54, 1. 26, 27. Change to a brief and definite statement. 

P. 54, 1. 29. What is gained by the repetition and antithesis? 

P. 55, 1. 4, 5. What rhetorical principle gives this sentence such 
force ? 

P. 55, 1. 9. howling wilderness. Where used before in this 
paper ? 

P. 55, 1. 10, 11. full, likely. Is there any inconsistency here? 

P. 55, 1. 29. What word has an unusual position? 

P. 56, 1. 4-8. What words and images give beauty to these lines? 

P. 56, 1. 16. What antithesis is implied in this line? How is the 
transition made between this paragraph and the last? 

P. 56, 1. 22, 23. arid, adust. Give the more familiar words of 
the same meaning. Why are the words of the text more effective? 

P. 56, 1. 25. Cf. Milton's use of the term in the lines: — 

" Mammon, 
The least erected spirit of those that fell." 

Par. Lost, I. 679. 



CRITICAL NOTES. 113 

What other words in this sentence give a peculiar beauty and 
dignity to the diction? 

Page 57, Line 2. Xerxes. What line of thought, given early in 
this paper and kept up throughout (see again p. 83), is recalled by 
this allusion ? How does it give consistency to the narrative ? 

P. 57, 1. 5. Has the author forgotten that the khan " was under 
religious obligations of terrific solemnity," and "was sensitive and 
timid . . . under the vague anticipations of ghostly retributions " ? 
See p. 29. 

P. 57, 1. 24. misery .... fruit. State literally. 

P. 58, 1. 9. immortal. Criticise the diction. 

P. 58, 1. 20. Spite. What word is understood before this ? Note 
the kind of introduction given to this paragraph and to the one on 
p. 59. What is the main idea in each? 

P. 59, 1. 20. transpiring. Meaning? In what incorrect way is 
the word often used ? 

P. 60. Are there on this page any of the author's characteristic 
exaggerations ? 

P. 63, 1. 14, et seq. Note the rapid and spirited narration in 
this incident, — the verbs, the shore sentences, the restraint of the 
diction. 

P. 67, 1. 6-16. Study the form of this narration. Show to what 
it owes its excellence. 

P. 67, 1. 22-26. What co-ordinate ideas in this sentence are not 
symmetrical in form ? 

P. 67, 1. 29. hornets. Cf. Milton's use of the same figure, Sam- 
son Agonistes, 1. 19, 20. Whose use of the figure has the more poetic 
quality? Why? 

P. 68, 1. 21, 25. From what source is the figure borrowed? 

P. 68, 1. 29. imbittered. What other way of spelling the word ? 
This form is now obsolete. 

P. 69, 1. 16-21. What lack of symmetry in this sentence? 

P. 70, 1. 12. What elements in the foregoing description make 
the choice of words so effective? 

P. 70, 1. 13. Note ¥X \q skilful change in tbe point of view. See 
Genung's Practical Elements of Rhetoric, pp. 329, 330. What is 
gained for the succeeding description by this change? 

P. 70, 1. 22-29. Cf . this passage with the explanatory note on the 
final incident of the Tartar retreat, and with De Quincey's reference 



114 BE VOLT OF THE TARTARS. 

elsewhere to this incident as occurring under the shadows of the 
Great Wall of China. 

Pages 70-72. Note the skill with which this picture is drawn; 
the completeness with which the reader is put into the correct mental 
attitude ; the elements of imagination introduced in such words as 
cloudy vapor, billowy volumes, glades, forest avenues, aerial 
arches, portals, pall, tumultuous, etc. ; the euphony of the lan- 
guage ; the skilful creation of suspense ; and the gradual solution of 
the mystery. 

P. 72, 1. 20. Force of the words in fact? 

P. 72, 1. 24. literal. What antithesis is implied ? 

P. 73, 1. 18. apparition. What is the effect of this word? Cf. 
sight, appearance, vision. 

P. 74, 1. 7. shroud. Primary or secondary meaning? See an 
unabridged dictionary. 

P. 74, 1. 9. upon. Meaning? 

P. 75, 1. 18. What has been done here to secure euphony? 

P. 76, 1. 24. almighty instinct. Where has the author used 
this phrase before? 

P. 76, 1. 28. Is there any redundancy in this line? 

P. 76-78. By what means is the description made so graphic? 
See Genung's Practical Elements of Rhetoric, pp. 327, 332, 334-337, 
341-343. This description is well worth a minute analysis. 

P. 78, 1. 26. found. Can you substitute a more accurate word ? 

P. 83. Study the diction for beauty and imaginative effects. 

P. 84, 1. 5. most rich, et seq. Note the dignity of this unusual 
form. 

P. 84, 1. 11. Cf. the beginnings of Shakspere's fifty-fifth and sixty- 
fifth sonnets. 



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